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We set off early from Paronella Park and started travelling to Mission Beach. The original plan was to maybe stop here for a while but when we got there nothing was open, not even the tourist information. So, we had a quick look at the beach and then continued our journey to Townsville.
We parked up in the town centre and went for a walk to try and find the tourist info there. I (Rachel) did the map reading and took us to where the place was, but turned out I'd got it completely wrong and dragged Graeme around for ages! We eventually found it, with Graeme's map reading hehe and enquired about Magnetic Island. Unfortunately we missed a booking for a tour that was going over, so we decided to do it ourselves (plus we'd save a tiny bit of money). We pitched up at a campsite near the sea and sorted our stuff out for the next day.
We headed the next morning to the ferry port to travel over to Magnetic Island. $29 each to get across so $58 for 2, but there was a deal on for 2 adults and 2 children for $40… now this didn't seem fair! We looked around to try and find 2 kids to kidnap but unfortunately they were all with parents!
We got over to the island and bought a bus ticket valid for the day. It dropped us at the YHA and we hired some snorkel gear for the day. The lady then recommended where to go to snorkel that was good. We got on the bus and then headed to a couple of bays. The first one we headed to we had to walk a bit to. Graeme thought he'd take me on a slight detour for a lovely walk through a river…no wait hang on it wasn't a river. It was a sewage works! But to be fair it got us to the beach! We started snorkelling here but the sea was very rough and it was quite hard to swim out. Graeme managed to see a bit of coral but nothing exciting. Infact the most exciting thing we saw was when we'd got out of the sea and looked back in and saw a big turtle pop its head out the water!
We then headed to another beach, Florence Bay, which the guide book and the lady at the desk had said was one of the best. We started snorkelling but again the sea was very rough. So rough that some guy had started surfing there. We then saw a couple who'd been snorkelling and looked a bit more professional than us, so we went to ask if they'd seen anything. They said they'd only seen a bit of coral and a few bits by the rocks, but nothing exciting. So we decided to give up and have lunch and a relax on the beach.
We then headed on a little walk to a fort, where it was possible to see koalas. We didn't though. I was a bit tired so didn't walk up to the top but Graeme did and took some pics of the views. He also made me a film to watch when he got back down!
We then jumped on a bus and headed to one last bay to have a look at. This was quite cool as we saw some big sting ray that were swimming close to the shore. We didn't snorkel here though we just watched them. We then headed back to the main bay, Horseshoe, and bought some chips for dinner and watched the sunset before getting a late bus back.
We got on the ferry and headed back to the campsite for a game of Uno and bed.
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