After Airlie Beach it was another Greyhound journey, which meant another fight to get on the bus with a ton of other backpackers, another grouchy bus driver who wants to shout at everyone, another uncomfortable bus seat, the worst movies that have ever been produced, all this on the way to Townsville where we were to get a ferry to Magnetic Island. Seriously though anyone who has been on a greyhound understands how bad the movies are on the bus, they are that bad that you can hear everyone laughing the minute they start!
We were dropped off outside the ferry terminal (the benefits of travelling in Oz) and jumped on a 30 minute ferry over to Magnetic! We had booked a PADI dive course package which included our accomodation in a place called Magnums, which looked like it used to be a relatively nice hotel back in the day now it looks like a ghost town hotel with very few people wandering around and a wee bit spooky. To save money we attempted to cook in the hostel kitchen, this kitchen had very few facilities but it did have a lot of ants and flies mmmmm. We tried to cook ASAP, eat and get out of there.
The next morning we were up early for our 3 day dive course. Lisa was quite nervous about doing the dive course, the idea of taking all the equipment off under water and having to put it all back on again was a little scary! We spent the first day in the classroom watching horrendous American videos, with very cheesy actors and then the afternoon was spent in the pool doing some of the skills. Our dive instructor was called Richie and was a nice guy, really helpful although Lisa went off richie and Dave (the other instructor) when they started calling her beaver because she put her BCD equipment on wrong and looked a bit like a beaver with a tail!
On the first night we went to watch the local frog racing competition which was funny, the frogs are in a bucket, people place bets and the first frog over the line wins, we would have put a bet on but people were betting $50+ we are not that rich! Lisa got to hold the frogs after they had finsihed their race, Ben was a wimp and didnt dare hold the frogs!
The next two days were spent in the pool and in the ocean completing all our skills. By the third day we were shatrtered but very glad to have passed our PADI open water dive course, which means we can dive anywhere around the world to a depth of 18metres now woo hoo!