Snorkel snorkel snorkel.

I've been snorkeling over part of the Great Barrier Reef!!!!! But we'll get to that. First off, after leaving Proserpine we drove up the coast to Townsville (we passed Bowen "The Authentic Mural Town" which is...a great accomplishment...I guess). Townsville is hot, but quite a lovely little city. A couple of cute cafés and restaurants - plus apparently a pub with a round pool table, which, alas, we didn't see. We spent most of the day along The Strand and had a BBQ out there. They also have the Rockpool, which is a walled off area so the crocs and stinger jellyfish can't get in and people can swim safely in the ocean. It was quite nice! The place we camped that night was full of older travelers and we got to talking with a man named Gary - he's been traveling for most of his adult life apparently. He seriously just drives around, working when he needs to, etc. Anyway, he told us we had to go to Maggie - or Magnetic Island - just off the coast. Later, we were walking through town and met an Irish guy who'd just come from Maggie and said it was amazing and quite cheap at the moment and that we just haaaave to go. We've sort of just been taking people's advice on a whim so off we went to Maggie the next day.
To get to Maggie, you catch a 20 minute ferry over to Nelly Bay and then bus to wherever you need to go. It's such a pretty island! I could definitely work there for like...3 months and be happy. We arrived at around 1045am and caught the bus to our hostel where we dumped our stuff and grabbed some snorkel gear. Our hostel is in Arcadia which is right next to Alma and Geoffrey Bay. There's a lovely bit of the reef in Alma Bay so we started there first. Mind you, I've never been snorkeling. Never. Laing, being the Aussie that he is, slaps the mask on me and says, "Just don't breathe through your nose. You'll be fine!" and chucks me in the water. It was terrifying. I panicked just a little. Not breathing through your nose with a mask on is hard at first, plus it's so quiet and all you hear is pretty much your breathing and flippers. Plus, the ocean and I aren't BFF or anything... I overcame it all though as I was on a gorgeous island and snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef! After about 10 minutes, I was pretty okay at it and am currently a pro. ;) It was pretty excellent as well because it was super clear that morning - you could see for 7 metres After Alma, we tried Geoffrey, but it was quite murky and getting late so we headed back to the hostel for the evening.
The next morning, we'd rented a convertible for the day - they're called Tropical Topless and seriously, we were in a Barbie car. You'll have to see the photos of that one. It was quite hilarious. We drove up to The Forts walk which takes you along the camp areas, ammunitions stations, gun stations, etc. of the base that was set up on Magnetic Island during WWII. It takes you all the way to the top of a little hill bit and you can overlook a few bays on that side of the island and the ocean. Quite pretty! It's also the area of the largest koala colony in Aus! We saw the cutest momma and baby koala along the way (I took an unnecessary amount of pictures) and heaps of butterflies too! It was quite hot after the hike so we drove up to Horseshoe Bay to have iced coffee and recuperate, then drove back to the hiking spot for Arthur and Florence Bay. You can't take cars down that way so you have to hike about 4-6 kms to get to the bays, but it's definitely worth it. So we hiked there and snorkelled away the afternoon. We saw heaps of fish, a couple stingrays and 3 REEF SHARKS during our snorkel adventures. It's really quite a sight. Laing also saw something like a sea snake or eel, but didn't mention this to me until I was out of the water and wouldn't get all nervous because it was going to try to kill me.
Later on when we were out on the deck, the receptionist gave us a bag of bits of veggies and told us to walk down the road and feed the rock wallabies. I seriously almost kidnapped one and made it my pet. The cutest dadgum wallabies ever! They're quite tame as well so lots will come up to your hand and eat right out of it. The hostel also does weekly Toad Races on Wednesday nights and we just happened to be there on a Wednesday night so we watched. People bet heaps on a dadgum toad!!!! The highest was $85 and it's just hoping that their one of seven toads hops out of the circle fastest. Crazy! Maggie is also home to weird birds. There's these creepy storky-like birds, but they move a bit like the raptors you see in Jurassic Park...they kinda make dinosaur noises too. I need to find out what they are.
We were leaving the next morning, but there's a Green Zone (you can't fish there) over by where we fed the rock wallabies and is great for snorkeling since all the fish hang out because people go there to feed them. Since we have a set of snorkel gear (But it's big so it only fits Laing) and didn't want to hire another, only Laing snorkeled there but he said there were heaps of really cool fish - including a few parrot fish and a groper. Mind you, gropers can bite off human limbs if they're big enough and agitated. This one was big enough to nip off a few digits. Ah! I managed to step on a bit of crab shell or coral the day before and had a nice pocket of grossness and pus on the bottom of my foot as well (No worries, mom, Laing's got a pretty awesome First Aid kit with which we cleaned out the cut really well, put on some Wound Gel and bandaged the sucker up so it's not infected or anything)
We then headed back to the mainland, visited Castle Rock (views of Townsville) and the Aboriginal Culture Center (some really amazing aboriginal art) and continued on our merry way. We popped into Tully to get a photo with the Great Golden Gumboot (why is everything either Big or Great and Golden?) - Tully's "A Pretty Wet Place" as they say. It's one of the highest places of rainfall in Aus. The gumboot is 7m tall or something like that and that's how much rainfall they had one year and onwards to Mena Creek.
Mena Creek is the site of Paronella Park. Back in 1913 a Spanish guy named José Paronella came to Australia to make his fortune as he had trained to be a baker/pastry chef and found the money wasn't to his liking. After laboring on sugar cane farms and then buying and selling some, he'd made a tidy sum, brought his woman over and started building a Spanish castle on a bit of land he bought out here. Alone. By hand. Seriously. He mixed cement in a wheelbarrow and built 2 castles. There's a lovely bit of waterfall and a lagoon so he built a giant staircase and carried all the sand and such he'd need up the steps and build his upper castle, complete with foyer, lovely little wishing fountain (which kids used to steal money out of until he put some freshwater eels in it to solve that problem) and movie theatre/dance hall. He then also built a picnic area by the lagoon with diving platforms, boats and everything, and a lower castle with a café and dining hall. Plus a few tennis courts he rolled from termite mounds with a giant wheel of rock, just for funsies. It was opened to the public in 1935 and quite a big deal for awhile there. Mind you, when he'd flatten the cement, he wasn't wearing gloves and this would wear off the skin raw and he'd have to wait 2 months for it to grow back and do it all over again. Talk about obsession. It's pretty amazing! Mind you, he trained as a baker and built all this as well as thoughtfully did it too! He made sure the angle of the lower castle was just right so you can see the waterfalls from the tennis courts through the open doors of the café. Also, he planted these giant Kauri trees in an avenue so they ended just where you could see the waterfalls again and so on. Amazing for someone who was supposed to just make bread. They also have some cool microbats, bentwing bats, which are the smallest bats in Aus and eat mozzies. Meaning there are hardly any here! And HUGE freshwater eels. IT WAS SO GROSS! Overall, definitely worth a visit! I think that's about it for now! I'll upload some more photos soon!