Port Douglas, Chillagoe, Townsville, Magnetic Island

After many many tries I've finally managed to upload pictures (only took 4 hours...) I've had a brilliant time since the last update, especially the weekends have been full of entertainment.The first weekend in Cairns (after thefirst 'school' week) I took it slow and decided to see something of the area. So I went to the Botanical Gardens and walked the Red and Blue Arrow tracks, which took me about 3 hours, including photo time. A lovely walk, almost like you're far away in a beautiful national park, right here in the city and only about 10 min from my homestay (less on the bike).

My host family has lent me a wonderful bike and I have been having some fun with it. Still need to take some time to do some nice rides out of town (when I get the courage, because it is quite hilly here, compared to back home that is), I might take a Friday off (we only do presentations anyway) and cruise around. Still need to go to Kuranda as well...

The weekend after we went to Port Douglas, where Ivan and Nick (other student here) were doing a triathlon and I just enjoyed the town, the beach, the markets etc. On the way there we stoppend at Palm Cove on Saturday afternoon for a bit of relaxing on that beach and Sunday was spent watching the men swim, cycle and run (for a bit). Lovely place. The travel bug kicked in again, so I booked myself on the Chillagoe tour with our guide Tony. Awesome weekend, driving up there, eating at the pub, chilling at the waterfalls (see photo below), checking out the old shelters (see photo at the top), watching the Milky Way with Scorpio and the Southern Cross and the highlight of going to the caves of course on Sunday Morning.

Great coffee at the Coffee Works before Mareebaand time to head home again. Amazing how quickly these weekends go. Last weekend we had a long one due to the silly fact that the Ozzies celebrate 'The Queens' birthday, while it's not even their queen technically speaking... They voted a few years ago if they wanted to become entirely independant from the 'motherland' and cut out this kind of nonsense, but Ozzies being Ozzies they didn't want to loose a public holiday and so they voted against it... Don't you love them??

Anyway that gave us an extra day off last Monday, so Carlos and I wanted to go down to Townsville to dive the Yongala, a very famous wreck off the coast near Ayr. I booked the dives, Carlos the car and off we went on Saturday morning.... all went well until we passed Innisfail (1 hour donw the road, 3 more to go) and we got a message that due to 'bad weather conditions and high seas (1,8 metres) they had to cancel the dives to the Yongala for the next day.... At first I thought Carlos was joking, but no.....we went back to Innisfail to check out the I-site and things to do around the area, but .... it was closed..... after a few buts we decided to drive down to Townsville anyway, check it out and hop over to Magnetic Island to see if we could find some koala's there.
We had fish andchips in Cardwell on the beach and arrived in Townsville around 5.30 PM....just after all the local supermarkets close (yes, incredible isn't it, such a big town and every shop is closed at 5.30 on a Saturday). We walked around a bit to orientate ourselves, got some food at a local pub and decided to look for our campsite for the night. Shelly beach in Town didn't allow camping overnight (as I had feared), so we headed north again to Saunders beach where we swagged for the night (see picture above). Lovely spot, we saw some possums, bush turkeys and some grumpy Grey Nomads....
Time to hop on the ferry and head to Maggie Island for our koala hunt. Luck was not with us as the koalas took a day off (tired of having their picture taken all the time I guess, celebrities need some privacy as well), but the Forts walk was amazing anyway. Stunning views, bit of exercise, cute little bats, big dragonflies, tiny lizards, lots of butterflies, happy times. We even saw some classmates on a tour ....

We got quite hungry around 3 and so headed to the busstop, to discover we just missed it and had to wait almost 1,5 hours. A well, it was dry, sunny and there was company because lots of people had just missed it. There was a juice van, so I went up to the lady and asked if I could buy some fruit instead of juice (we were very hungry by that time). After a bit of hesitation from her side and persistence from mine we agreed on 2 apples for 2 dollars. A good deal for both sides I guess. We took the ferry back to the mainland and had dinner at Cactus Jacks in Townsville (again the entire town was deserted, very weird). Food and company was good and after a long drive we reached home and our warm comfy bed around 10.30 pm. A huge thanks to Carlos for all the driving (we didn't kill anybody or anything along the way so that went pretty smoothly) and my homestay family for lending us the amazing swags. A true blue Ozzie adventure! As mentioned before we were also off on Monday, so we took Satori out to Ellis beach and worked a bit on our sun tan (which for me by now is non-existent as I do not take the time to sit in the sun to tan (too boring). Hopefully we'll get plenty of sun this weekend when we are heading up the Tablelands on our ROADTRIP organised by Katja and me :D