Aussie Kindness and Airlie Beach

After realising I'd left my phone on Magnetic Island yesterday I was in tears! But thanks to Aussie kindness I've got it back. I rang after the bus company Sun Buses emailed my mom to tell her they'd found my phone, and the boss, a lovely lady called Jane said that she was coming over to Townsville anyway so she'd bring it over for me, so we changed our bus from the 11.30am to the 2.15pm. She was coming over on the barge with her car, the barge was meant to dock at 2.10 so she had 5 minutes to drive to us. By 2.15, she wasn't there and we had told the bus driver our situation and although he wasn't happy, he was waiting. After waiting almost 20 minutes we spotted Jane's car, which luckily she had informed us was gold, but as she hopped out the car with Luke running towards her like a psycho, she told him she had thought we were on the other bus so she stopped that one and gave the phone to the driver. Oops!

So the greyhound lady at the terminal had to call the other driver and ask him to drop the phone at the freight place at the other end of Townsville, and she booked us onto the next bus at 7.25pm, while Jane drove us over to the freight place at the other end of the city, bless her! On the way we found out she was planning to travel to Thailand and Cambodia, so as our thank you, we bestowed all our knowledge upon her, of all the best places to go, and she loved it! We were so thankful for her kindness and it meant that I got my phone back! 

After all this drama, she dropped us back at the bus terminal. We put our bags in a locker and headed into the city to get some lunch and kill some time til the next bus. We ended up finding a cool little barbers for Luke to (finally) get a haircut, before going for lunch at Cactus Jacks (best burgers ever!).

We then walked back to the bus terminal and I sat reading my book and Luke played Pokemon until the bus arrived. The journey took over 4 hours, with a 40-minute stop at a BP garage. We got a taxi when we got to Airlie, and the friendly driver pointed out all the main points of interest on the journey to help us out. We'd called ahead to let the staff at Bush Village Cabins know we'd be arriving late, and a friendly Aussie called Bryan had helped us out, and although the reception closed at 8.30, he left a box outside on the table, and a note inside along with our key! 

The cabins are so lovely, our bed is absolutely huge, and we collapsed in it as soon as we opened the door. 

This morning (or rather, this afternoon) we went up to reception to thank Bryan for the note and to introduce ourselves properly, and he helped us out showing us the best value tours to Whitehaven beach. We ended up booking one for Monday because it was full tomorrow so we're staying here a night longer than we planned but it's okay because we really like it. We walked to the shops around the corner, and bought a load of meat, before bringing it back and cooking it on the barbie at our accommodation, which is right next to the pool. Then after cleaning up, we went for a swim. So far, we love it here, tomorrow I think we're gonna take a walk down to the lagoon.

Bryan has got three cute little white dogs, a few chickens including a Silky (?) not sure how to spell it but it's fluffy and cute. There are also tonnes of cockatoos and lorikeets. We even saw three kookaburras! Luke took heaps of pictures as usual, so here they all are.

The Great Barrier Reef, Townsville & Magnetic Island

 4 days ago we went took a day trip  snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. We had to be up at 6.00am (which Courtney wasn't happy about) to walk to the marina and board our boat at 7.30am. 

We boarded our boat along with about 35 other people who were also snorkelling or scuba diving and had a 2 and a half hour drive out to the Outer Barrier Reef. The Reef is made up of around 20 mini reefs, almost like coral islands submerged under water. Some of the reefs were surrounded by huge drop offs of about 20-30 metres down to the sea floor- a pretty daunting sight when you swim over to it and you're surrounded by deep blue water, almost expecting an eerie shadow of a great white to be looming in the distance...

But thankfully we didn't get attacked by any sharks! However we did see a small white tip reef shark, about 1.5 metres long and swam right underneath us!!

I've posted all the photos below; the picture quality doesn't do the reef any justice at all! The reef was bursting with marine life; fish chasing eachother, diving into crevices and feeding off the coral. We saw so many different types of fish but it was hard to capture photos of then as the reef floor was about 10 metres down and the flippers we were wearing made it hard to dive down, but I still got a few good snaps!

We saw some giant clams on the sea floor

And nemo hiding in his little white anemone house!

There was so many things to take pictures of! 

There were HUGE drop offs to deep ocean, I managed to capture a few...

And the rest of my photos are just of the colourful coral or the many fish that we saw!

We also saw a jellyfish! I was swimming next to it, about 10cm away and I didn't even know! Courtney had to shout me and warn me to swim away! It was so scary! 

We dived in 2 locations, had lunch and cheese and biscuits and sailed back to the mainland. Unfortunately Courtney got sunburn on the backs of her legs where the wetsuit didn't cover, even though she put loads of sun cream on, the sun is extremely strong here. 

Now we are in Townsville, we are about to get on a bus to Airlie Beach, we have been here for 2 days... Yesterday we went over to magnetic island on the ferry, had lunch and walked along the heavenly beach which was totally deserted; absolute paradise! Along the beach there were trees full of tropical birds sqwuaking and flying around! 

Unfortunately when we got back to the mainland, Courtney realised she had lost her iPhone 5... She had left it on the island somewhere. After much panic and a lot of stress, this morning we received a phone call and they had found it on one of the buses we got on the island and now we are waiting for it to be ferried back over! The ferry gets here at 2.10 and we have to get on our bus to Airlie at 2.15! Hopefully we will make it!! 

I drew Courtney and a pirate too^ lol

We also met a cute pug! (Again!) Mr Sniffles!

And 2 days ago I saw a green tree frog and we both had a mega mac from mcdonalds!!!!! 4 burgers on one bun!!!