Magnetic Island and Townsville were great places to visit from a tourist's point of view, because we were actually meeting real life Australian people! Frankly, it's starting to annoy me that everyone I seem to be meeting is usually German (sorry but they're everywhere except their own country right now) or English or Irish or Scandinavian. Why so many Germans? I sit in these hostels, or on a beach, or a bus or even just walking round town, and I could just as well be in Europe, I don't understand a word of the languages being spoken around me! Sometimes I feel a bit of an outsider, in an English speaking country!! But yeah, when we went to a Full Moon Party on Magnetic Island my ears pricked up as I finally heard some Australian accents, woop! Except the bad habit of saying "aye" at the end of every sentence grates somewhat but I will let them off because at least they don't speak German! The Full Moon Party was good fun, wasn't the actual full moon that night but I guess they had to have the event at the weekend! The real full moon was a few nights before when Annika and I were in Townsville. It was enormous and had a bright orange glow to it. So much so, that our first thoughts were that it couldn't possibly be the real moon, it must be some kind of light display from a nightclub or something....but no, twas the moon indeed. Interesting stuff eh!

Airlie Beach was our next port of call after Magnetic Island. We stayed two nights in a freezing air conditioned room before setting off on our sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. We boarded a nice boat with three staff and 25 guests (of which I was the only English, the rest were, yes, GERMAN!) and set off for 2 nights/2 days. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side for the first half of the trip. So Wednesday night saw me and Annika dancing up on deck (alone!), kitted out in waterproofs looking very Regatta chic, beer in one hand and doing some kind of rave sundance to impress the Gods and to make them stop the rain. Don't think they could make sense of our knee flexing/chicken wings/spinning pizzas, so the rain continued! Bugger. So we got through our alcohol supply instead and talked all kind of profound ramblings about stars and "being a tiny megapixal in the gigantic poster of life". Yeah man.

Next morning the skipper kindly woke us up at 6.30am by bringing up the anchor and chugging the boat along to White Haven Beach. I sat up in my cabin bed (shaped like a coffin and shared with Annika, romantic hey) and immediately felt sick from the waves and smell of oil below deck. So I managed to get up top for some air, but couldn't face any breakfast from the rocking of the boat, not good first thing in the morning!

We arrived at White Haven Beach later that morning, zipped up in stinger suits and dropped off on the white sandy shores. In the rain. Under the clouds. Oh paradise blue sky photos, where are you? We got in the water, laughing our heads off for our one opportunity of being on the Whitsundays, in terrible weather! Oh, did we get the giggles! Eventually the boat crew picked us up again (lucky buggers keeping dry on the boat!) and just as we left to sail on, did the blinkin sun decide to shine! So for the final half of our trip we had some sunshine and a lovely sunset in the evening! Wahey! We did some snorkelling and lots of sunbathing, and all was well again.

Quite happy to get back to solid ground again, though the trip was good fun. We travelled on by overnight bus that night to Agnes Water and stayed at a brilliant hostel called Cool Bananas. The overnight bus meant that the next day was a bit of a wipe-out to recover from interupted sleep, but still, who wants to waste 11 hours in the day by being on a coach? We chilled out for a couple of days in the lovely hostel, sleeping in hammocks and watching lots of good films, and now we are in Rainbow Beach, preparing to do a Fraser Island self guided safari trip for the next two nights. I am the designated driver for tomorrow, as I am the only one in the group who drives on the left in their home country (guess what nationality the rest of my group are!) so I'm gonna be responsible for the safety of 10 others in a 4x4 tomorrow, HAHAHAHAHAA!!!!! We'll see how that goes! Temperatures are meant to reach 45 degrees tomorrow, hello Australia! We've had our safety talks about dingoes and driving on sand, so lets hope for the best and hopefully we won't get bogged down in sand too often! At least I won't have to push!

Hope your thoughts are with the passengers!

It's all go

Well it's been an awfully long time since I last wrote anything on here. Firstly because there wasn't much to report whilst I was working away in Port Douglas! I finally left Port Douglas after a stay of about 7 or 8 weeks, ready and financially backed up to start heading down the East Coast towards Sydney. Hooray! I spent the final week in Port Douglas in a state of luxury accommodation wise - a friend of mine had been living in a holiday apartment with some other girls, and since they had now moved on she was looking for someone to share with again temporarily. It worked out pretty well for both of us, so for seven happy days I enjoyed sharing a private and spotless kitchen, bathroom, living room, TV and free laundry facilities! Rather nice.

It was a shame that Annika and I were suddenly overcome with waves of car sickness on the windy bus ride back to Cairns, because before that we'd been bopping out to the funky tunes from our ipods on the back seat, totally excited to be on the go again and not cleaning hotel rooms or serving pizzas to tourists! So on arrival at our hostel in Cairns we looked a bit green (getting in the spirit for Halloween I guess!) but it was soon forgotten once we reunited with some friends that we'd met in Port Douglas, and got shown around our new pad! Calypso Hostel was a million miles better than the Parrotfish in PDouglas. Oh my days, we had been living in a slum compared to this, and paying more for it!

We had a great time in Cairns that week, immediately being introduced to a whole bunch of friendly faces, and enjoying some nights out, as well as a brilliant Halloween party at the weekend. I managed to fit in a day of volunteering at a print workshop just outside of the centre, which prints work for aboriginal artists. I helped with etch plate printing which was really good, great for the CV too I hope!

Annika and I did a bit of research and booked ourselves up for some treats down the East Coast, successfully playing several travel agents off against each other to get the best price we could for a Greyhound bus ticket and some sailing trips! Our first stop after Cairns was Mission Beach, where we both did our long-awaited 14,000ft sky dive!!! Hip hip hooray! We didn't really sleep much the night before, and the 7.30am pick up was quite uncomfortable! I was bouncing with excitement as I got geared up with the harness and onto the bus to the airport, but once we took off, rose above the clouds and knew that I was the first one out of the plane (from a group of 10) I was, well, pooing my pants. The tandem parachutist was rather abrupt with me when he was telling me to swing my legs out of the plane and all I could do was instinctively grab onto the other people beside me in the aircraft!! haha! Plus I kept forgetting to hold my head back on his shoulder before the jump, so the DVD shows him having to keep pushing my head back! But surely, if I'm sat on the edge of a plane I'm gonna look down right?

So, one, two, three, and boy did I scream! Full mouth full of cold air, neat hair completely destroyed by the gusts of wind, arms and legs locked backwards beneath the instructor and there we were, free falling for 60 seconds. What a weird sensation too as we went through some clouds. Like little wet hail stones on your cheeks. As my brain came back to reality I remembered that I was indeed connected to a parachute and it soon hauled me back up again (quite uncomfortably with the harness on actually!) and we started to descend over Mission Beach, with amazing views of Dunc Island, beautiful ocean and the sandy white beach below. I even had a chance to steer the parachute, oh yes. As we got closer to landing it looked like we were going to crash onto a palm tree but thankfully, it was a nice smooth landing on the sand. One of the other group wasn't so lucky though - his parachutist screwed up the beach landing a bit and they ended up landing in someone's back garden (no joke) with ripped shorts and a sore bum to show for it! ah dear. Think he bagged a free t shirt for that though!

So I've done it now, ticked the thrill seeker box, would like to do it again though if I ever can! No way to bungy jumps though. Like suicide but without the death.

Coincidentally, my house mate from uni, Adele and another uni friend, Charlotte were in Mission Beach at the same time as us, so we met up for a good catch up. Very strange to be talking about uni stuff whilst on the beach in Australia but so it goes! It was really nice to see them both and exchange travel stories. They also had a good laugh at our skydive DVDs!

We're now in Townsville for a few nights before heading to Magnetic Island for another Full Moon Party. Then next wednesday we set sail on a 2 day 2 night boat trip around the Whitsunday Islands. Beaut. It's been busy and exciting recently, and I'm loving every minute. I still can't get my head around the fact that it's November and nearly Christmas, maddness.

Think that is about all from me! byee