Relaxation, Relaxation, Relaxation!!! We stayed in Townsville for 1 night b4 we headed to Magnetic Island. It was valentines night so we went too dinner - a fantastic mexican called Cactus Jacks! That night we stayed in a hostel which reminded us of one of those half way houses and the people there made it feel that way - not that great! Magnetic Island was lovely - very tropical! It is really werid how this country changes further north you go. Anyways we meet some friends there and spent the days lazing by the pool and partying to 60s and 70s at night. We also went on a tour of the island with this mad 60 yr old hippy who had no teeth and spent the whole time telling us stories about his ex girlfriend - poor girl. Picture this - an old man wearing hot pants, a tight tshirt, piercings and jewelly everywhere who looked identical to popeye! Magnetic islad has the biggest natural koala population in oz - on this tour we were meant to go and see the, and well we did sort of. The mad guy pointed out this tree which seemed full of koalas but as we got closer we realised they were all teddies! I swear we didnt know whether to laugh or cry on this tour but i think i did both.....a great 4 days! We arrived @ Mission Beach only to be really dissappointed by our accomodation - we had high hopes! Luckily we only booked for one night and therefore we could change to the luxurious resort over the road. Here we took long walks along the beach and generally chilled out by one of the four pools that our new accomodation had!! We also met a guy from manchester here who had to be one of the most accident prone, funniest and nicest guys weve met! Pete has fallen in love with Cairns and now doesnt want too leave (we leave tomorrow). Although we have had quite abit of rain here which has meant we havent done much we have had a very good 8 days here. The best part was our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Although on our way there we were both VERY sea sick - the scuba diving more than made up for it. For the majority of the time we snokelled over the reef which is fantastic. We also however did our first dive - and lets face it there is no better place than the Great Barrier Reef. We went down around 10m for about 45 minutes. The fish (so beautiful and some so BIG), sharks and the coral were absolutely amazing. We loved it so much that we are now really thinking about doing our open water PADI dive courses in Thailand where it is so much cheaper! We are now heading to Darwin via Mt Isa, Tennant Creek and Katherine. We then head down the middle to Alice Springs, Uluru and Coober pedy before taking the Ghan Train to Adelaide. We are really looking forward to this part of OZ as it is mostly in the outback - the real australia!