The sailing trip after-party was awesome, mainly because if you spent $5 before 8pm you got half a large dominos pizza for free! Food is definitely the way to a backpackers heart. They're clever though as they make you wait an hour and a half for the pizza which means that of course you've drunk more than it's worth by the time it arrives! Still a good deal though.

The next day we logged onto our internet banking to find out that somehow someone, somewhere, had spent over a thousand pounds on Jak's credit card :-O Most of it was spent in Walmart but to add insult to injury they also bought lunch in KFC with it. Now Jak has been going on for ages about how much he misses KFC and it really peed him off that the person who'd cloned his card had been able to enjoy it at his expense. Luckily the bank was really good when we rang them up and they contacted us within a day or so to tell us that they would be refunding the money as the transactions were clearly fraudulent, having been processed in Georgia. We've never even been to Georgia so god knows how they got Jak's card details. It makes you worry.

That night we took part in a quiz at the hostel in the hope of winning a bottle of champagne (fed up of goon now). We felt quite smug about our chances as quite a lot of the participants were European and struggled to understand the questions. They must have been feigning ignorance as the Dutch team next to us managed to answer 'palindrome' to the question 'what do the words level, racecar and anna have in common?'!!! How the hell do they know the word 'palindrome'?? We wrote 'spelt the same backwards' and felt quite proud of ourselves. I am constantly impressed (slash embarrassed) by travellers who come from non English speaking countries who speak better English than us! Needless to say, we didn't win. We didn't even come close.

The next day we travelled to Townsville, the supposed capital of North Queensland. After checking into our hostel we went exploring, thinking that we would be able to do some shopping. It was 2pm on a Saturday but most shops and cafes were closed - and many had 'for lease' signs in the windows. We only saw about 20 people in an hour. We found out afterwards that they've built big shopping centres out of town which has led to a mass exodus of people and shops from the heart of Townsville. It seems a bit of a shame, especially as we don't have a car to visit these fancy shopping centres!

Luckily the main reason people come to Townsville remains; Magnetic Island ('Maggie' to the Aussies) is just 8km offshore and can be reached easily in 20 minutes by jumping on a ferry from Townsville. We did exactly that on Sunday and spent the day over there.

Once there we sunbathed at Horseshoe Bay until we were absolutely exhausted from the heat and unable to lie out in the sun any longer. Australia is hot so that only took about an hour. For some reason we then thought that it would be an opportune moment to undertake the 90 minute Forts Walk that had been recommended to us. Within 5 minutes we were both dripping with sweat and wanting to collapse by the side of the track. The only thing stopping us from doing so was the complete lack of shade - and the fact that a sign had warned us to look out for the death adders (and to 'enjoy your walk!' Ha) After 10 minutes of sweaty walking we stumbled across a koala asleep in a tree and after another 20 minutes we found two more, a mother and her baby, sleeping back to back just inches from the path and at eye level. They were so cute! We decided that the walk was worth it, even if we had lost almost half our body weight doing it.

After the Forts Walk we headed to Gregory Bay to look for the rock wallabies we'd heard live there. We didn't think we'd see any but we spotted about eight among the rocks, including one with a tiny joey in her pouch. They didn't seem at all scared of us and let us come pretty close :-) Gregory Bay itself is very pretty and the sun was going down as we walked across it to the ferry terminal, trying to ignore the ugly IGA supermarket and grey high-rise apartments that rather ruin the ambience as you get closer to the terminal.

Yesterday was the day of my grandad's funeral. We went to church to pray and then found a quiet spot to read through the speeches and prayers that would be read out at the church service in England and listen to the songs that would be played. They were beautiful. Afterwards we raised a toast to him over a very 'Grandad' meat and two veg dinner and played lots of poker, because he always got us playing it at family gatherings and it reminds me of him. Love you lots Grandad <3 xxx