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The night before leaving Ailie beach i had a strange encounter of someone standing at the end of my bed, shining their mobile phone light on me. Unaware i was watching them the whole time i turned to face them properly where they promptly threw their phone on their bed and ran round the corner. I can only presume they were checking if i was properly asleep before stealing something as he had checked the others beds for people beforehand. Thankfully other people staying in the dorm came back a minute later and the guy just went to bed.
And so the next day i didnt mind leaving Ailie beach but i almost didnt made it to my bus as the transfer mini bus left without a group of us waiting for it inside. I dont think anyone seen a backpacker spritn with a total of 20kg spread between 4 bags after a bus, faster than a hostel employee also trying to hail it down. Thankfully i stopped the mini bus for us all to get on and soon borded the greyhound. That day heavy rain had set in again cancelling everyone who was going on their whitsundays tour and evacuating people camping on the islands. When it rains in australia, it rains! Seeings as it is meant to be the dry period we had non stop heavy rain for the WHOLE day. Arriving in Townsville i encountered my first oriblem of no courtesy bus to meet me, no taxis and on phoning th ehostel, poor directions as the line was bad due to the weather. I was drenshed within seconds and guessed the direction towards the town to try and find my hostel. I found a little shelter where i got out my guide book which was rather soggy but it was telling me a completely wrong direction to where i was told to go. I thankfully made it into town and by sheer luck found the hostel. I changed ibnto less wet clothes from my backpack once checked in and decided to go and have a look round the town. Even armed with my waterproof i managed to get pritty wet and at 3.30pm all the shops closed becuase of the weahter. I decided to go for lunch as ther was nothing else to do and our hostel itchin was s*** due to being wrecked. Anything healthy in Australia costs a lot! 2 apple had previously cost me one pound ten and the salad and cup of tea i ordered came to $17!!! To put that into perspective a dominos pizza is $5 a mc D's buger $3.70 and fish and chips $9. Unfortunately for me the only exception to that rule is chocolate where you can (on a deal) get 2 bars for $5. Chocolate is horrible though becuase they put de freeze in it to stop it from melting which kind of takes the point of chocolate away. On arriving back at my hostel i met a girl from my gratefully girls only room and that evening went to a pub for a free toddler size potato and cheese padded out with leaves before headign back to our room for tea and timtam slams (apparently we get timtams back home now so you must try them, there the best buscuit ever!)((timtam slam= biting 2 corners of the buscuit and sucking your tea through the center :) )) and tv. The next morning i caught my ferry to magnetic island. Magnetic island was named as such becuase captain cook sailed past this island and his compass kept pointing to it even though its not north. The island is secluded bliss lined with palm trees and beaches, shared between back packers and autralian OAP's. My hostel was situatued on the beacj and they played music oout fromt he open bar and everyone relaxed by the beach and pool to it. In the evenings there was always intertainment like trivia, games and while i was there a friday night party, so had a great few evenings out with people i had met. On arriving at the hostel they had no rooms left and so had mvoed me for no extra cost into the sanctuary, an all girls dorm which i was quite pleased about as i met some lovelly people. On my last day i met upp with Ben who was also on magnetic island but at a different hostel and done a fort walk where there were koalas sleeping in trees at head height then spent a couple of hours wlaking round different bays and trying out snorkelling again but with not much luck. That night i got a well deserved sleep as bus loads of world youth day people had turned up and inhabited everywhere in the hostel and then got the ferry back to townsville the next morning for my greyhound to mission beach.
I met Ben again on the bus and we travelled to our hostel absolute packpackers. The town is tuiny and consists of 3 well spaced out hostels, a suepr market, a petrol station and a few general convenience stores. Our hostel was one of the nicest we had been to with a very large kitchin (which you appreciate after a while), large flat screen tv and best of all free tea and coffee. Apart from being very quiet it was lovelly. That evening for some unknown reason i became unwell and was sick until about 3.30am. It did mean that while being unwell i had the large flat screen tv all to myself for the first time in 5 weeks and watched a brilliant old english movie. After going to bed at 4 i wasnt asleep lonmg before being woken up by the rest of the rom so i decided to take a 2 hour walk along the beach. The place is do deserted that you could walk for 30 minute along the beach without meeting anyone. It was like your own little haven. I decided to relax the whole day as i still wasnt feeling 100% and people in our hostel had bought a movie so we watched that before i got another early night. I woke up about 5.30 absolutely freezing. As there are no clouds in the sky the temperature drops from 3.30pm and the nights are so cold. needless to say i didnt fall asleep again but i had to get up early anyway as i had my extreme white water rafting day tour and was being picked up ay 7.30am. I was transported to the Tully river to boat down grade 4 rapids (grade 5 being the hardest, 6 being 100% death). There were 3 other extreme rafting boats and we went down the river first before the other 10 day tour boats. We had a wonderful boat including a friend i had made from my room and a crazy kiwi instructor. We learnt the basics of differewnt positions we had to take up in the boast and spent a fantastic day crashing down rapids getting soaking - and only our intructor fell in!! As we were on tyhe extreme boat we got to stop off several times for other activities. One of which was jumping off rocking into the river, At first i looked over the edge and although having done coasteering before was pritty dcared and forced myself to jump off, thinking what have i got myself into with my bungee jump coming up. I soon got over my fear though and was doing spinning and forward flips off the rocks :)) We done other things such as going down a mini waterfall shoot to be plundged underwater far enough that we had to equalise our ears while under the water and jumping into spirling rapids which if you relaxed, to float in before getting thrown out down stream. It wa sonly 20 degrees that day and so even though i had hired a wet suit top everyone was shivering the whole way down. the day flew past and after incuring several injuries including strained muscles, cuts and bruises ended the tour on such a high and was shattered and returned to the hostel.. Me and my friend Ian relaxed infront of the tv that evening before catching an 'early night'. Even though i was fully prepared with 8 layers, a sheet and a blanket on i was absolutely freezing again and was awake until about 5am that morning! After little sleep (again) i got up the following morning to catch my last ever greyhound to my final stop-Cairns
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