There isn't much to do in Agnes Water/Town of 1770 so I decided I may as well spend my last day here doing something adventurous. I saw an advert for the opportunity to fly your own plane and thought why not! Mid afternoon I was picked up from the hostel and driven to a field in the middle of no where with a large shed and run way stretching across the field. I sat there waiting for the guy and his plane to arrive back from the previous trip. 10 minutes later I hear a plane coming overhead and down comes this tiny two seated plane and I start wondering what I've got myself into. The pilot, Bruce (yes really) quickly gets me strapped into the plane, booster cushion in place as I couldn't see over the top of the controls haha and head set to match. He turns the plane around and off we fly! Being scared of heights I wasn't really sure I'd enjoy it but the scenery was so lovely I couldn't help but enjoy it. Bruce was a little crazy, but lovely with it. He did his best to scare me, tilting the plane 90 degrees as far as it was go so I was looking right down at the ground below but I loved it. We kept doing nose dives and sharp turns and all sorts, it was brilliant! After about half an hour flying towards the coast, we headed to land on a deserted beach. The beach was surrounded by rocks covered in oysters and little rock pools with crabs scuttling around. Bruce was quick to get his knife out and start hacking away at the oyster shells on the rocks. I was hoping he wouldn't have any luck finding any as the thought of eating them wasn't that appealing. However much to my disappointment he comes along oysters in toe and tells me to open wide....

Much to my amazement I actually liked them. They were pretty small and slightly yellow in colour and a lot sweeter than I imagined. Apparently the larger ones are much saltier so of course we set of rock hoping further around the corner to find some bigger ones! We found one or two larger ones but nothing like you'd see in a restaurant (thank god). We did however come across a sea cucumber which Bruce promptly made me hold and which I dropped as soon as possible. The sea cucumber being the seas version of our garden slug....lovely.

Back across the rocks and to the plane it was time for the real fun to begin....I get to take off :D Strapped in and given 30 seconds instruction I get control of the wheel. We set off full speed along the beach and towards the cliff face in front....pretty scary as you're gathering speed. Slowly, slowly I had to pull back on the steering wheel and up we went! The wheel is really sensitive, nothing compared to that of a car. So up we go, cruising around the coast and back into land. We managed to spot some sharks off the coast, tiny from way up there which is just how I like them. Feeling rather confident I asked if I could have a little fun and do some nose dives etc with the plane. Of course Bruce agreed, the more extreme the better in his book! After I'd played around with the plane, flying in every direction I could, and going as low as I could Bruce thought he'd have one last attempt at scaring me. He tells me to watch the propeller....so I'm watching and suddenly he cuts the engine and therefore the propeller's stop and we're just kind of floating in mid air, very surreal. Next he starts pretending the plane is going to crash and performs a "fake" emergency landing on another beach! Within 30 seconds we were down on the beach and then back in the air again. With the sun beginning to set we headed back in land and to the runway. The trip lasted about 2 hours in total and I had a brilliant time, definitely a once in a lifetime experience that I won't forget. Have a video of me flying the plane which I'll try to upload at some point :)

Later that evening it was time to move onto Rockhampton. We waited outside the hostel to be picked up by the greyhound shuffle. Apparently this goes around all the hostels in Agnes Waters and takes them to the greyhound bus. So on we pile to this small rackety little bus that starts driving out into the middle of nowhere and then begins to slow down, pull into a turn around just off the main road and tells us all to get off. So about 21 of us are stood in the dark, in the middle of no where. No street lights, nothing! We wait for about 45 minutes wondering if anyone is actually going to come for us or whether we should start a fire to camp out for the night. Eventually the actually greyhound coach turns up and on we get.....very strange! The journey to Rockhampton took around 4 hours which meant we arrived pretty late at night.