Magnetic Island is officially a suburb of Townsville which, as it is situated about 8km offshore, only takes about 20-25 minutes to reach by ferry. It was named by Captain Cook who believed that magnetic fields generated by the huge boulders he could see were causing problems with his compass! He was wrong!! Once we arrived on the island, we made our way to the bus stop and jumped on the waiting bus to our hostel, Base Backpackers. Although the island isn't really that big, it took quite a while to get to the hostel as the bus seemed to go down every road and drop people off at their front door!! Once we did arrive, we got ourselves checked in and made our way to our room (109) which turned out to be a funny A framed building with 3 sets of bunk beds. The boys then went off to arrange their dive (they have booked to dive the Yongala wreck in a few days and need a minimum of 6 dives experience, without this one they are 1 short!) and came back excited to say they were going in about an hour! This gave us time to get into our swimwear and sun tan lotion up before heading down to the pool (which doubled as the dive centre!). While the boys were having their briefing, I got chatting to an Israeli guy named Max. Well I say, 'got chatting to', in actual fact, he had very strong opinions on pretty much everything so he kind of talked at me using the 'F word' at least 5 times each sentence! It didn't take long for me to make my excuses and disappear down to the beach!

While the boys went off on their dive I laid on the beach so I could get some pictures of them emerging from the sea whilst also topping up the tan! It was so hot, the 45 minutes they were gone seemed to last forever and I was convinced I was going to be burnt to a crisp by the time they resurfaced!! Eventually they did come back up, I got some cool shots of them and was relieved I wasn't actually at all burnt! The boys said they had enjoyed the dive as, apart from Gareth's initial fun dive, all their previous dives had been done out at sea off a boat whereas this one was a beach dive so you just walked in and went under (I'm learning!!) . However, the visibility wasn't very good and they hadn't really seen very much. For them though, it was just a means to an end and now they have their 6th dive they can go ahead and dive the Yongala in a few days!

We were all pretty hungry by now so we set off on a wander to find a cafe or food store. After about 15 minutes, we came across a couple of cafes but they were closed so we had to settle for the food store! We stocked up on water and juice as well as grabbing some rolls and cheese to make lunch! We decided that was enough exploring for one day and we really needed to sit and formulate a plan for the 2 days we had left here, so headed back to the hostel, stopping at a really cool tree to climb and do pole moves on along the way! By the time we had put together our plan, and chatted to our roomies (A lad from Milton Keynes and Felix from Germany) it was getting quite late so we popped out for our free meal (beef burritos, yum!) and a couple of drinks. Tonight's entertainment was bingo but it really dragged on so we were glad we were just spectating and headed back to the room halfway through!

The next morning, we got up reasonably early, had our free breakfast and caught the bus to Forts Walk . This walk had been highly recommended by a number of people, partly for the exceptional views you can see from the top and partly because of the possibility of seeing wild koalas in their natural habitat! I was less excited about the possibility of spotting a death adder as a friend of mine had seen on his trip! Unfortunately, we didn't see any koalas, it was a really hot day and anyone with any sense would be hiding in the shade (clearly the koalas are smarter than us!) but the views truly were spectacular! There were also interesting remains of the defences built and used there during WWII. The walk in total was about 2.5km long and as we were desperately searching up high for koalas and down low for snakes as well as trying not to trip over the uneven terrain, it did take us quite a long time to complete. Other people, however were up and down in about 45 minutes.

After our trek, we hopped back on the bus and travelled a little further up the island to Horseshoe Bay. Feeling rather dehydrated (no one thought to fill up our water bottles before we left the hostel!) we grabbed a bottle of water and a bottle of juice before making our way to Bungalow Bay animal sanctuary . We booked ourselves onto the 2:30pm presentation and also bought the tickets to enable us to hold and have a photo taken with a koala! This had been my main reason for wanting to come to the island so as you can imagine I was very excited!!

The presentation was fantastic! It lasted about 2 hours in total, during which time we were introduced to a huge range of animals and were allowed to hold each! We all held a crocodile and were amazed at how soft and squashy they are underneath! We also watched her be fed! The boys held a black cockatoo named Shadow who liked to take a seed from between your lips and we stroked Charlie, a white cockatoo! We all got in the pen with a wombat, although he looked nothing like Izzy he did remind us of her as at first he was laid on his back asleep with his legs up in the air and then as soon as he smelt food he leapt up and tucked in! We then met a range of different skinks (funny lizards!) and held each of them as well as a turtle and then came the bit we had all been waiting for ... the koalas!! First we met one of the babies and all got in the pen with him while he was cuddling a tree! Then we each had a turn at holding Noah, the dad, and had our photo taken with him! The trick to holding a koala successfully is to act like a tree apparently and the more still and relaxed you are the more comfortable the koala will be! It really was an amazing experience. The final part of the presentation involved meeting a python and a spider! The boys were brave and held the python but the spider's bite is poisonous so we all just looked at it in the tub!!!

At 4:30pm every day, the keepers at the park bring out tubs of wet bread to feed the wild lorikeets who have made their homes in the nearby trees. No matter how hard I try to describe the scene, it won't come close to the noise, colour and frantic activity then ensues! As soon as they spot the tub of bread, the birds go crazy and within seconds there are about 100 birds flocking round desperately trying to get hold of a piece! They land on your hands, arms, head and squawk incessantly . If 2 want the same piece of bread they squabble which was hilarious to watch as 2 did this on the top of Matt's head!!! Not being a fan of birds I decided to skip this and just take photos of the boys getting covered, the birds however had a different idea and still landed on my head! My scream must have made them jump as they promptly pooed down my back!!!!!! I did manage to get some brilliant photos in between my panic though!

Following this, we made our way up to the front desk to collect our photos only to discover they had been deleted before they had printed them! We were so disappointed as apart from a few hastily taken pictures of our own which were a bit shadowy, we had nothing as a souvenir of our koala cuddle! The manager offered us a $5 refund (considering we had paid $15, this seemed a little unfair but apparently $10 is for holding the koala!) but that wasn't good enough for us so we suggested we came back for the next show (10am the next morning) and had another photo taken then! She agreed to this and whilst it meant changing our plans for the next day and missing out on visiting another part of the island we all agreed it was worth it!

Following our disappointment, we made our way back down to Horseshoe Bay to get the bus back to a pizza place we had seen near our hostel . After about 5 minutes, Matt spotted what he thought was the tree we had climbed and insisted we get off the bus! I wasn't so sure but my pleas were ignored and before we knew it we were off the bus, at the completely wrong stop and sitting in the dark waiting for the next bus, which wasn't due for another hour!!!!! That's the big problem with a small island they only have a couple of buses - 1 heading in each direction!!! Also with it now getting dark and cool thats when the wild life comes out to play. so were now sat in the dark listening to all the noises and half expecting to see the snakes or cassowaries turn up to add to our troubles. Eventually a bus did arrive and we hopped on, arriving at the pizza place about 15 minutes later! Once we had finished eating, we walked back to the hostel where we met our new roomies, 2 very chatty girls from Norway and then crashed out for the night!

The next morning we were up even earlier and back on the bus to Bungalow Bay. We were relieved when we got there and were greeted by the manager who explained she would take us down to Noah at about 11am so we could get our pictures taken again. Two other girls from the day before had also decided to come back and get another photo so we all waited patiently and then went down for our second cuddle! The photos came out really well so we were all pleased we had come back! We decided to spend our last couple of hours on the island on the beach at Horseshoe Bay before heading back to the harbour to catch the 13:05 ferry back to Townsville.

Maggie Island, as she is affectionately referred to by locals, is a beautiful island with a lot to offer and is definitely somewhere we could have spent longer. We were all sad to leave!