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Days 27 and 28 - YOU SHLAAAG!!
Day 27 begins with an early morning as we have to check out of gilligans for the final time!! The last 10 nights have been epic!!! I don't want to leave!! We have to get a long way across cairns with all our luggage to catch the greyhound bus down to Townsville! Ball ache and a half at this time of the morning! We make the bus in plenty of time and set off on the inexplicable 4 hour 40 minute journey! It's such a short distance, we're not quite sure why it takes so long! But we have a laugh so it's fine! We arrive a few hours later in Townsville right at the ferry terminal, and there's a ferry leaving in 10 minutes! Love it when stuff lines up like that!! We get to magnetic island soon after and we get a bus to our hostel, which is a 'base' they're all over oz and nz apparently! First impressions of the place are good, but because I've had to lower my standards since gilligans spoilt us rotten its probably not as good as some other places! But it has a gorgeous location and a bar so we're more than happy! There are two young austrians straight out of school in our room called Stephan and Julia, they're a couple of really nice kids they come down to the bar with us and we have a few jugs of beer to wake ourselves up as its a Saturday the bar is quite busy and after our free tea we have a few more beers and a boogie! Then we have a pleasant surprise! The three lads who'd been in our room in gilligans turn up (the three where one of them is Cumbrian), they're on for a big night so we have a couple more beers with them before attempting to get our goon and take it to the beach but the whole property is licensed so you're not allowed alcohol in your rooms! Our plan is overheard by the management and they follow us to the room and confiscate it all!! We speak with the manager who's taken it and we understand we've done wrong and it's all amicable! However he does tell us what to do if we do want to drink goon on the beach, we've got to buy it and hide it in the bush across the road!! Good plan that man!! So after our beach party is cancelled we call it a relatively early night ahead of a day of exploring magnetic island!!
Day 28
Day 28 begins with an early morning to catch the free breakfast, it's just a couple of rashers of bacon 2 eggs and 2 slices of toast! Come to think of it that's pretty damn good! It's tasty but the eggs are underdone for my taste... Can't snip too much at a free meal! Dickie and I then rent scooters with Stephan and Julia (Tom and Carla don't get one because their insurance has expired). After hiring some snorkelling gear we head out on the scooters to have a bit of an explore of the island! We head down to horseshoe bay first to see what the score is with some snorkelling but we see the beach is closed due to extreme danger of stingers (especially the box jellyfish) so we decide to head to the koala sanctuary just up the road and take a tour! It costs $21 to do this, we see all sorts animals before the koalas, I held a crocodile, a python, lizards, turtle, some sort of bird and finally the koalas! I hold the koala and treats me just like a tree it can sleep on! I get photos with all these and then we head out to find some snorkelling! We've heard that a place called Florence bay is quite good for it, although there's a catch... We can't drive the scooters there because its a private road with a $300 fine! It's a 2km walk to the bay, which doesn't sound too bad right?? Wrong!! It's all on very hilly terrain, there's a steep climb after every corner and in 30 degree heat this isn't fun!! But after half an hour we make it to Florence bay, my god this is so worth the walk! It's unbelievably beautiful! It's a shame the water is quite murky so you can't really see a lot on the reef that's there but we see a few fish, some coral and thankfully no jellyfish! After a bit of a swim and a snorkel we have to head back because time is getting on a bit and we've got to have the snorkelling gear back at 4:30 so we head back to base and give the stuff back and head back out for another cruise because we've got them for another hour! We get back, have a spot of supper and wash before the nights antics! We head to the bar and order a jug or two and get chatting to a few other people around and about, including the weirdest small world moment that's happened to me to date! We meet Stephanie, who's a Canadian who's dad lives on Barbados, she's also lived there before! She knows of Natasha and Stuart! (Cousins from Barbados in case you don't know them) We then end up chatting about de island for a while, this turns into one of the best nights of the trip due to the finding of this weird obscure connection!! I LOVED magnetic island, it was much more fun than the last time I was there as we were being b******ed after the cairns incident on tour! Don't particularly want to leave but got places to go!!
Thanks for reading!
Will
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