Wednesday 28th May - Sunday 1st June 2008

Hello, just arrived back from Magnetic Island, which is just off the coast of Townsville. Had a quality time over there, really enjoyed it!

On Wednesday we booked a package deal where we got 3 nights at Base hostel, a day cruise on the Great Barrier Reef and a couple of little extras such as free kayak hire and snorkel equipment etc.

So we set off on Wednesday afternoon, parked the car in a free unlimited car park around 10 min walk from the harbour - we have yet to go back and make sure its still there, but we parked it under a CCTV camera so hopefully all is still good!!

On the boat over to Magnetic Island I met a girl on there that I knew from Sydney when we were staying in Coogee so had a quick chat with her, we arrived in the hostel which is slap bang on the beach its a quality place! On the way over there were just some bush fires starting up back on the mainland so we had a good view of those, which looked pretty impressive come night time!

That evening we had a few drinks with the guys in our dorm, then hit the sack ready to head over to the Great Barrier Reef.

Thursday morning we were up at 7, ready to leave for 8 and then the boat left for the reef at 9. The boat doesnt normally run on Thursdays, however the wind was meant to pick up over the weekend so they had canceled those trips and just running one today. I was expecting the boat to be heaving with people going on that one instead of the weekend ones however it was dead! The boat normally holds 130 people, but today there were just 36 so we were able to stretch out and get quite abit of attention from the crew which was cool.

The 2 hour boat ride to the reef was the worst boat journey I think Ive ever been on the sea was unbelievabley rough - the crew supplied me with plenty of sick bags! When we hit the reef the sea settled and we got kitted out with snorkels and stinger suits. Even though the jelly fish season was just coming to an end we decided to wear them just incase for a peace of mind.

Once out in to the water I snorkelled the reef. Adam did an introduction to scuba diving for an hour. I didnt bother doing it as they didnt go very deep, and I would rather do a proper course later in the year so I can break up my time abit, dont want to rush and do everything in the first 6 weeks. The snorkelling was awesome though saw alsorts of jazzy fish and that - loved it!

For the journey back to the island the crew supplied me with sea sick tablets which settled me down, I was fast asleep for most of the journey though so maybe they were sleeping tablets?!!

On Friday we just chilled out on the beach outside the hostel.That evening me Adam and this guy from our room went to the main bit of the island to grab a pizza and a few bottles to drink. Then when back at the hostel all of our dorm hit the bar for a good drinking session. In our room we had 3 Irish girls who were a great laugh! So we had some drinks in the bar then that closed at 12 so we brought out our own booze and ended up staying on the beach until 4am - god knows what doing, the time just flew by. Adam left at around 12ish he was pretty wasted already, then when we arrived back at the hostel he had been sick all over this girls bag. A nice sight of the spaghetti he ate earlier littered all over her clothes! Thankfully the girl was p!ssed so saw the funny side of it, so we woke Adam up and he denied it hah but he couldnt remember doing it, and with him being the only person in the room its quite hard to get out of that one! So we were up until around 5ish sorting that out.

On Saturday we were due to check-out however we wanted to stay another night so checked out of the room we were in and moved in to a Tee-Pee style thing. During the day we hired out a kayak and doodled around in that, and also chilled out in the hammacks to have a nap and catch up from the night before.

That evening we went around to Picnic Bay with Adam and the other guy. Here there is another biggish bar. We watched some sport in there and had a few drinks before heading back to the hostel bar.

And here we are now on Sunday back in Townsville. The weather is great its hot hot hot and the sun is blazing. We are now moving down the coast to Airley beach where I think we are going to go cruising around the Whitsunday Islands and then down to Fraser Island. Weve got 19 more days left with the van and go the whole east coast to do so gunna get a move on.