i HATE public transport

today through no one's fault but my own i missed thje greyhound and two hours later i get to leave.

last time though - my ferry let another one in front of us - and then we docked late and the "bus that meets every ferry" had already left. the next one was also in two hours. grrrrr.

regardless, my trip to magnetic island was beautiful. i did kilometers adn kilometers of hiking to see forts and escarpments and boulders. i saw KOALAS IN THE WILD - two of them just chilling in trees. i went snorkeling, and though i saw no coral, i did see a giant stingray and a blue spotted ray - after which i made sure to do the stingray shuffle. no way i am getting poked. i did get stung by jellyfish this morning - i did not have a stinger suit on - but they hadnt put the nets up on the beaches at the islands and everyone told me it was safe - wrong. it is not a big sting and it didnt hurt for too long.

the birds at the bungalows were obnoxious and as a result i woke up at 530 instead of 630 but this allowed me to do more hiking. plus the dinners they have there are cheap but huge and delicious. and the staff was supernice trying to help me figure out what to do. i also took a bus tour of the island with 5 people who were twenty years older than me - one of which was norm who did the crazy tour with capricorn dave with me. i got to feed rock wallabies and surprisingly the picture i took of myself is better than the one the bus driver took of me. it will be posted when i dont have to pay 4 dollars an hour for the net (cheaper than my last hostel where it was 10 dollars an hour)

so anyway, wasting time in townsville. there is nothing to do here. there is reef HQ which is fabulous but i spent five hours there a couple of days ago going on all the tours so i am not going to pay to go there again. instead i wil spend an hour on the net and go get all you can eat pancakes - cheaper than the aquarium.