Cairns to Airlie Beach

After those few days of rain we hit Cairns to lots of sunshine and have now had 18 days of hot sunshine!!:D  We're not as ghastly white as we were when we first arrived now..... After a lazy day in Cairns and a night out with our hostel 'Asylum' (dressed as mad escapees!( for Halloween)) we headed to Townsville. Admittedly there wasn't much to do here (apart from an olympic size swimming pool which Tiff loved!) but it was from here that we went over to Magnetic Island or Maggie as it is affectionately known. Unfortunately its not actually magnetic though, a huge disappointment! Our hostel on Maggie was very cool with an animal sanctuary attached, lots of hammocks and pool with a sign to watch out for falling coconuts! Our highlights of Maggie were doing the forts walk...there was a fort, but the best bit was the search for wild Koalas and we found 9 including a baby (we had a small amount of help from arrows on the floor left by other walkers but still.. Lizzy did spot a few!) and one leaping to another tree, they don't normally move much!! After a champagne breakfast we visited the onsite sanctuary and risked our lives holding a croc, snake, lizard and letting a cockatoo take a seed from our lips (we have survived to tell the tale!). After Maggie we travelled to Airlie Beach to pick up our boat to sail the Whitsundays. The next few days went in a bit of a blur, the first day we headed out to Haymen Island where we did our first introductory dive - it was pretty amazing, at one point we found ourselves surrounded by fish and a huge Maori Wrasse. The next day we headed to Whitehaven Beach (a stunning beach on the Whitsunday Island with swirling sand patterns, the sands so fine can be used as a good exfoliater!). After this we sailed out to the Great Barrier Reef (Bait Reef) where we stopped for a couple of nights and did a few more dives and snorkelled lots! Both were incredible - the coral and the fish/turtles/sharks, made it look like a whole other world under there! We even managed to put on a dance show under the water (all caught on camera...!) On our sail back to Airlie beach we were joined by 5 dolphins swimming by the boat, incredible!  The sailing trip was amazing and thankfully we had a boat full of really friendly people and funny crew who made the trip really memorable.