Stu and Brent had said that they'd wanted to do a boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef so they ended up booking on my boat trip to Green Island so the three of us got up at 6:50am and checked in at 7:30am. The boat had 27 people on it and we had muffins and tea and coffee when we boarded. After only a few hours sleep we were all very grateful for the caffeine! We sailed off towards Green Island and when we arrived we went snorkelling. We followed one of the crew members who pointed out things to us under the water. We saw some nemo fish - some big ones and really small ones - and some clams which were beautiful in colour and huge. I then had to go and get ready for my scuba dive so I left the boys to it and swam to the boat to get ready. I'd had a briefing which had made me less nervous as I was worried that I wouldn't feel confident and wouldn't remember what to do but they had reassured by saying that they would be holding our hand the whole time and would adjust our bouyancy and everything. All the gear felt so heavy that I thought I was going to topple over but I made it to the edge of the jumping platform, and holding my mask in place I jumped off into the water. To get used to the breathing I held onto the metal bar underneath the boat and lowered my head into the water and started taking deep breaths. It was a really strange feeling getting used to the breathing and I felt a little panicked but I forced myself to calm down by taking lots of deep breaths and then the crew member lowered me down. As soon as we started going down I saw a small reef shark, which was exciting. Luckily it wasn't near enough to send my heartbeat and breathing out of control! I had to keep holding my nose to make my ears go back to normal as the pressure in my head was really building and would've become really painful. I then saw some more clams and was able to touch them to make them close. We then saw a turtle which was just lying there and it was amazing as it was right next to me and was so relaxed that it didn't move. It was really surreal and I was so excited to see it. I could touch the coral and saw some really pretty fish too. I was in the water for 25 minutes and was on a real high after seeing the shark and turtle that I couldn't wait to get back to the boat to tell the boys about it.

When I got back on board I grabbed some lunch and then told the boys about my diving experience. They'd had fun too and had seen a sea cucumber which they said was really sludgy. When we were eating our lunch lots of reef sharks surrounded our boat, which was really cool.

After lunch we got the dingy over to Green Island, which is so beautiful. It has a hotel resort on it and a crocodile sanctuary and is quite small with forest in the middle and sand surrounding it. Whilst the boys went to the crocodile sanctuary (I decided to give it a miss as I figured I'd see enough of them when I was in the Northern Territory) I explored the island. I walked through the centre, passing the hotel and helipad and then walked around the island's edge on the white sand beach. I swam in the sea and saw a turtle and tehn a manteray swam next to me. After my swim I sunbathed and then waited for the boys. After getting in the water again with the boys we decided to head to the pick up point, thinking we were on time as we hadn't seen the dingy come over, but then when we went round the corner we realised we'd missed the boat. We had to wave our arms around to be seen so we could be collected. We felt like naughty school kids! To 'punish' us the skipper drove deliberately quickly so we were bouncing around in the boat and then he drove in a couple of circles really quickly. I cheekily said to him "Call that a punishment" as I'd thought it was quite fun:) We got back on board feeling like the naughty kids and then had cheese and crackers followed by cake and a glass of wine for the sail back.

I sat near the skipper and chatted to him, asking him about his job and how long he'd been in Aus for as he was Scottish. I asked him for some interesting and exciting stories about what he'd seen whilst in this job and he told me as we sailed back. We got back at 5:30pm and me and the boys agreed that the trip had been 10/10 as we'd had such a great time and Green Island was beautiful.

We headed back to the hostel and then the room all headed down to dinner and then when the boys said that they were going to be going out I decided to stay in the Irish girls' dorm as I was feeling really unwell as my throat had got worse probably due to the diving, talking and late nights and I could only talk in a very quiet squeaky voice.