oz, tick! done. dusted. put a pin in it it's done etc etc i've had a ball here in oz, second time round. Tomorrow i fly to singapore and spend the last two months(ish) of my travels going round asia on dodgy trains, buses and boats. but more of that later...............

Where did i leave you? ah yes, the curiously named Agnes Water (its a twin-town, actually more of a twin village with the 'Town' of 1770) The hostel there, Cool Bananas, was by far the best hostel i've stayed in, in oz. Really clean and comfy. Problem was it was nearing 90% humidity when we were there (the worst for 6 years) and i was constantly sweating. It was really hard to sleep at night too. Apart from that it was a really nice stay there. didnt do much of note, just sat around reading and sweating.

Next we got the overnight bus to airlie beach. Lets get this straight-i hate overnight buses, HATE! i just cant sleep on them, at all. and of course everyone else can so they're all sitting there sleeping with smug looks on their stupid faces as i slowly go mad and plot increasingly cruel fates upon them all. Like i said, i hate them.

To make matters worse, when we got to airlie the stupid hostel forgot to send their stupid bus to pick us up and we had to get a taxi. when we got ot the hostel they didnt have a reservation for us. we didn't have time to argue though cos we had to leave immediately to get on our day trip.

The day trip was class-very soothing! We were on a 80ft purple catamaran called the Chimera. We spent the day cruising round the Whitsunday islands (go look them up on google images-amazing) snorkelling, sailing and eating and drinking all the free food and booze. Class day, the weather could've been a bit better but wasnt bad.

The rest of the time in airlie was spent lazing around. I managed to watch a LOT of the Aussie open tennis. We also had a really good night on Oz day but i'm not going to bore you with the details of yet another night out.

The next stop was Magnetic Island, a tropical island off the coast of townsville. The hostel here has the best location of any i've seen-beach huts right on the beach! amazing place, at least it would have been if it didnt rain heavily the whole time we were there and the rooms hadnt flooded and the kitchen wasnt a complete mess........wasnt all bad. had a good night out (yes, another one) which started with us getting stranded at the supermarket cos of a storm. so we did what anyone would-went to the bottle shop, bought a bottle of wine and drank it under the shelter in the car park!!!

The next bus trip was to cairns. Two hours into the journey we were informed that a river had burst its banks and we couldnt get there. We had to return to townsville. so we sat on the bus for 4hrs for nothing. Then we ended up in a hostel that looked like a prison, with over a hundred Irish labourers who looked like they wanted to kill all backpackers.

All in all i've had a great time in Oz but now i'm just dying to get to asia. I've also said goodbye to my travelling companion of nearly 3 months, Katie. We had a ball Snell, you absolute ****-***!!!