On the road again, up north towards Townsville, we passed through Bowen and Ayr and a few other farming/harvest work type places, any one of which I could have wound up stopping in to work. They are all pretty unremarkable though, although I earnt little money in Airlie, having the lagoon and beach to relax on definitely made my time there a lot more pleasant!

We rocked up at Townsville at 11.30am. I was to spend the night with Philippa, a friend of Mama's from back in their school (or uni) days. She wasn't free til 2pm so I shoved my bag in a locker and, on her advice, went for a wander along the Strand, the beachfront area of Townsville. Not expecting to like TV very much, I was pleasantly surprised by this long, green, attractive stretch, the beaches were nice and bordered by a strip of parkland with benches and trees and stuff. The views out to see where quite obscured by the dust-haze, but still pleasant enough. For lunch I had a "Moreton Bay Bug Burger" from a seafood place, on the reccommendation of my Lonely Planet, was pleased to discover that there were no bugs involved! A Bug is a Slipper Lobster, and whilst I was feeling all pure and virtuous at eating local produce, i found out that Moreton Bay is actually all the way down in Brisbane, so not local atall!

Met up with Philppa and back to her house, where I met the DOGGIES!! I am so starved of doggie-loving, it has been way way too long, and this was not just any doggie loving, but golden labs, one older and one.. PUPPY! It was the cutest, naughtiest, cheekiest most adorably big-pawed and clumsy thing I have seen in a long time! It was at that chewing stage so when I got down on the floor with them to give them cuddles it got it's jaw around my arm and chewed and slobbered all over it, it was great! My brown Havianas were a casualty of my night spent in a house with a puppy, but it was more than worth the price of a new pair!

In the evening, we went to see an open-air production of Shakespeare's HenryV in the Queen's Gardens, whcih was fabulous, it has been a long time since I did anything remotely cultured like that and the (admittedly small) artistic part of my brain relised it! The open-air aspect was enhance by fruit bats, squabbling noisily in the trees above, occasionally lobbing down half eaten fruit and nuts (a couple people got hit) and showers of pee/poo raining down. All these theatrical types, trying to concentrate on the performance and pretending not to notice they had a splat of guano on their shoulder!

The next morning, an impressive trip up Castle Hill to the lookout to have a look over the (dusty) city.. always brilliant for orientating onself, lookouts! CH is the huge hunk of rock that sits bang in the middle of the city, visible looming over rooftops and at the end of every street. Philippa was doing her fortnightly volunteering session at the ReefHQ aquarium in the town, so I got to go in for free! In there is the largest captive peice of living coral reef and some other very awesome fish. It was great to see some of the reef fish in tanks that I have seen snorkelling in the last couple of weeks. also listened to a little presentation on dangerous animals in the sea and watched a somewhat disqueiting dvd on Jellyfish, which enlightened me and made me a bit nervous. Irukandjis and BoxJellyfish are the main ones to watch out for round here, most common Nov-May but can be around anytime. The Irukandji is about the size of a fingernail, with up to 3m long tentacles, which give a seeminly painless and small sting... it is only up to 3hours later when the effects are felt, which are very painful and can be fatal! These are great bathing-fellows! Needless to say, upon arriving at Magnetc Island I jumped straight in the sea and had a lovely (if over-the-shoulder-glancing) swim.

My timing for being in Townsville was brilliant, later that day was an Australian Defence Force Airshow, which I watched from the beach, and it was great! Saw a couple formation performances from the type of planes that fly down together then spiral off in opposite directions only to come back togethere and loop and spin and nosedive and just generally do very exciting stuff and high speeds in the air. Roulettes and Thunderbirds they were called, with the later being louder and faster than even the RedArrows. Many photos taken of the end tip of a tail, as I coudln't press the shutter fast enough to capture them before they flew out of the other side of the frame!
4.30 I was off on the ferry over to Magnetic Island, or Maggie as it is affectionately known.

Magnetic Island is simply beautiful. It is just gorgous and has the most wonderful contrast of really quite big hills with ridges and hiking and forest and then lovely sandy bays with turquoise water. There are huge rocks and stacks everywhere, with the iconic Hoop Pine dominating every ridge, which makes for very spectacular vistas. Parts of the island are so so dry... this is the DRY tropics with hardly any rainfall riverbeds are just troughs of dust and rocks, with not a drop in sight, but on other areas of the island grow plans that don't care about haivng much water like palms, which make it look very lush and green.

Possibly inspired by the natural beauty all around me, which gave a very 'healthy' feel, I went for a run both mornings I was there, the first in about 7months and it nearly killed me, although I felt great afterwards. I was staying in Bungalow Bay YHA, a lovely eco lodge place, with the dorms in A-frame huts and an attached camp ground and the entire site was absolutely TEEMING with wildlife! As we sat down to eat in the evenings, possums came out and nosed around the tables looking for scraps, they have the most ridiculous looking walking style, kindof swinging each leg around from the outside to the centre to put it on the ground..

I hiked for two days, 15km the first day and 10km the next. My first trek was the Forts Walk, around the remains of an old WW2 fort that was stationed here as a battery and signal station to protect the important naval and shipping port of Townsville from the enemy (in actual fact, only one shot was ever fired from Magnetic Island guns and that was at a US Navy ship that arrived unannounced!). It was awesome to see these huge hulks of concrete ramins amoungst palms and tropical paradise. and I saw my first Koala in the wild! Yay! Later on that day, walked down to Arcadia and did a 5km loop walk through baking landscape at midday on my own with not enough water (dur!) and right down to the south of the island, where another spectacular lookout made the hike all worthwhile. Second days hiking was around the bays of the northeastern corner of the island, with a girl from my dorm who had the same plan and the same superfast hiking speed as me!

It was with regret that I said goodbye to Maggie, I could easily have spent a week here! Next stop was Mission Beach (well, not the very next stop as the OzBus in true useless OzBus style stopped not only for coffee and for lunch in a random retirement town but also in order to let us get out and climb to the top of the "Golden Gumboot" in Tully, a symbol of the year they got the golden gumboot award for having the highest rainfall every recorded in Australia, 7.9m! That IS quite a lot, but the idea of giving an AWARD for highest rainfall is an intreiging one to me.

So onto Mission Beach, where I was to stay at the much anticipated Scotty's Beachhouse (reccommended by many!), on first impression it lived up to expectations! The bus driver CARRIED my bag to my dorm for me! The dorm was nice and new and superclean, there was a showergel dispenser in the shower, SOFT thick loo roll in the ensuite and a full tray of icecubes in the freezer section of the in-room fridge.. Bosh!

There's not much at mission beach really, it's quite hot and humid and people mostly come here to do whitewater rafting or skydiving, neither of which I was planning to do. But after an evening of hearing other people talk about skydiving I gave into temptation and this morning paid $300 for the pleasure of being pushed out of a plane at 14,000ft. As it was so spontaneous and last-minute and entirely untypically-me, I didn't have time to get nervous! It was only on the way up in the plane when there was just a clear plastic sheet-door protecting us from falling out and the ground dropping away beneath that I started crapping myself (not literally, that woudl have been very unpleasant for the guy that tandem-jumped with me.. but I was a bit nervous then!). Could see pretty far in spite of the dust, the reef and islands and lovely long coast and stuff.

I was first out!

First they opened the door, and it was suddenly very blowy and very cold and there was nothing between us and the outside. Pretty soon the red light went on (goggles on), then the amber, and I had to swing my legs outside the plane. THAT was the scariest bit! Sitting on the edge of the floor of a plane with the Earth spread out below you and your feet dangling out is a feeling like no other, especially when you know that within seconds you are going to be free-falling through the sky. Think I said something along the lines of "oh f*** oh f*** oh f***" then i turned my head in time to see the green light light up and boomf we were gone!

In the training session they taught us to push forward with our hips as we jump and hold onto the harness. I held onto the harness but all memories of hip-pushing or anything else were out of the window! Must have done it ok though coz the guy tapped me on the sholder which was the signal to let go of the harness and spread my arms wide. Wow! I tried to look all around me and see everything, it was very surreal, didn't really feel like we were falling very fast atall. My mouth was really dry and my lips and cheeks kept being blown about by the force of the wind! It must have looked very funny, although I didn't pay for the DVD (it would have been an extra $100). Apparently the freefall was a minute long but it felt like about 20seconds before the parachute was up, and it jerked us upright and we drifted slowly.

Then we could steer by pulling on cords with either hand, which I got a chance to do. Pulling on a cord tilted us round to steer and gave me a feeling each time in my stomach a bit like the jelly-feeling from doing looptheloops in a plane.

Soon we were down and I had to hold my legs up while he landed on the sand, then put them down, hurtling along the sand, legs in the air was pretty fun too. The tandem guy got to do up to about 8jumps a DAY depending on how busy it was, what a great job!

So yep! I skydived today! It was fabulous and I am glad I did it although one ear is still blocked (hoping it will clear in the next day or so.. it HAS to clear before monday coz I start the dive course then!). Actually, though, if I have the choice to spend that money again i preferred the acrobatic scenic flight, it was much more exciting for me, and gave me a much bigger adrenalin rush than the skydive.. but I had to do it to find that out. And now I can't WAIT to do my next acrobatic flight.