So the flight over was nothing special... The airline I flew with was jet star, a budget airline, and Jesus could you tell!!! The seats were really close together and if you wanted to buy anything to eat/drink you had to pay with card and show identification but a passport wasn't classed as identification.... Say what?!?
Anyway, a long flight later and a stolen airline blanket for Alix, I finally arrived in Australia!!! I actually said to myself several times "I'm in Australia" sad I know, but I started to think I'd never get to Australia at one point and here I am :D
When I got to passport patrol I was greeted with a "hey, how you going mate?" (how you going is there way of saying how are you? And I love it and will be trying to enforce it in the uk) I love how chilled and relaxed they are here already, as soon as the woman asked me where I'd been and I mentioned Thailand I just had this gut feeling that they'd want to look in my bags!! I mean, if it's going to happen to anyone, it'll be me right?!?
So I get my bag and walk towards customs and surprise surprise, "how you going mate? Do you mind stepping over here?"
So they made me empty the main compartment of my bag, then he patted the side pockets (not exactly as thorough as 'nothing to declare') and told me that was fine and that I could be on my way....

So I'll repack this bag then, shall I?

Guess so.

The hostel I was staying in provided a free transfer from the airport so I got picked up and then headed to the hostel. The guy at reception was really nice and gave me my room key; when I opened the door to my room I thought I'd walked into someone's bedroom as there was stuff everywhere lol!! (it turned out one of the girls in the room, paulien had been staying there two months) anyway, I had a shower, chatted to a few people in the hostel and then decided to walk to the supermarket because I knew everything was going to be super expensive.
So yeah, Australia is definitely more expensive than most places, but after being in Singapore was probably around the same and there's definitely ways to eat cheaply so my main purchases were bread and peanut butter.
When I got back to the hostel, I met paulien out my room and she introduced me to a group of guys she was friends with at the hostel so we spent most of the afternoon just talking in the hostel.
It all seems really chilled out here, but maybe too chilled out that actually you just waste days away!!
Paulien had to go to work so I was talking to the guys for a bit but then after realising I had had two hours sleep, I went to have a nap in my room.
When I woke up, I met Anna, our other roommate who was from America and made wine for a living... Awesome job alert!!! She was really nice and we got on really well so we went to the local bar together to meet a friend of hers and have some tea.
Then we just went back to the hostel, chatted quite a lot because she was leaving the next day and then went to sleep. She'd been to the great barrier reef that day and had told me all about it so I decided Id book it the next day :D

(oh and also Turkish delight here is even bigger than at home, they even do duo bars whoop whoop)

The next day I booked to go to the great barrier reef the following day and also booked my Whitsunday's sailing trip, which I am very excited for but could only afford a two day one night excursion unfortunately. Then I booked my greyhound buses to mission beach, Townsville and then to Airlie beach for the whitsunday's.
The rest of the day was just a bit boring, Walked round the town, had bangers and mash for tea then went to bed early for my trip to the reef.