Well, I think I left you in Magnetic island.  The weather didn’t stay bad for long, and I hired a bike to explore the island and all it’s little bays. Should have really taken notice of the woman’s warnings about hills!! It gave me a bit of a work out anyway, and made me appreciate the rest stops on the secluded beaches even more!
Went from there to Airlie beach, where I went on a 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsunday islands.  It was amazing.  Went snorkelling on the reef, beautiful coloured coral and fish, and stopped on Whitehaven beach-paradise! Felt much more comfortable snorkelling now that I had done an actual scuba dive. We had really good weather for sailing-we all had to sit on one side while the other side was practically in the water, going really fast!

After a party with the guys from the boat when we got back, I headed down to Rockhampton-which is a bit of a wild west style town stuck in a time warp, had the nicest steak i’ve ever had (it is known as the beef capital of Australia) and stayed in a lovely little place above a pub.  I was quite glad that i’d met a nice irish girl Sarah to hang out with, otherwise i
might have felt a bit weirded out-as it was we could laugh together at the place and the people!  We went out to the Capricorn caves together and then to a fig tree where we aimed to cure Sarah’s fear of spiders-this involved me having the biggest and hairiest spider i’ve ever seen crawl all over me (rested on my face and covered from my eyes to my chin!).  Eventually Sarah had it on her hand-what an acheivement, as she was absolutely terrified-she did really well.
We then went out to Great Keppel Island together, where several people had told us the beaches were deserted.  We were sceptical, how could it be that so many people found a beach where noone was? But it was actually true-the beaches we found were deserted, so we spent 3 days just lying in the sun!  Met up with another girl Sonia, who we both knew from various spots on the east coast, and we all had a very quiet but nice few days together-the highlight being winning Bingo at the bar!
Then, that was it! I flew back to Sydney and right back into the hectic business of catching up with everyone and trying to sort out a way to come back to the country.