With our PADI diving licences still fresh in our pockets we arrive in Ayr after a night out in Airlie beach. We hope to dive the Yongala wreck which is reputed as one of the top 10 dives in the world. We camp outside the dive centre and get up about 7:30am to check in. The weather looked pretty awful and feared that the dive wasn’t going to happen. Our fears were confirmed when we went to in the centre to check. So we decided to wait one more day for the dive. We drove into the town centre of Ayr and found a nice rest area by tourist information where we pretty much slept for 5 hours as we only had about 3 hours sleep the previous night. When we eventually woke up, we drove around town and found a cinema where we bumped into Dave again. There wasn’t much choice in films to watch. It was either four holidays or bride wars. We initially bought tickets to see bride wars and saw the trailers and thought it was going to be rubbish so we sneaked into the four holidays showing instead. But that turned out to be a rubbish film anyway.

After the film, we chilled out in the only hostel in Ayr where Dave was staying. It was a backpackers place for workers that looked unwelcoming and like a prison. After this, we found a quiet street in Ayr to spend the night. When we woke up in the morning the weather was crap. It was raining, windy and dull. It was obvious already that the dive was going to be cancelled. We called the dive centre up which confirmed this. We gave up hope of diving the Yongala wreck and drove straight to Townsville to catch a ferry to Magnetic Island taking Dave as our first passenger.

We arrived at Magnetic Island around 2pm and check into a place called the Arcadia Hotel which is actually a hostel. We ended staying in a 6 bed dorm with Dave and meeting two new girls, Ester and Michelle. The weather never improved but got worse. We were on a beautiful island but it was pouring down with rain. We already had enough of this bad weather and decided that we were going to leave the next day to Cairns. We didn’t want to leave Magnetic Island and do nothing so we headed out to a small hike to called Forts walk when the rain eased off a little. Along the walk we was supposed to see some wild koalas and also some old world war relics. We never saw much of either. However, we managed to see a Kookaburra and some concrete platforms where some bunkers and old army stores used to be.

On the way back, Mike managed to slip over and he cut up his leg a bit but it as all superficial and he soldiered his way home.

In the evening, the hostel was pretty empty but there was a bar where we got to enjoy a few beers with our fish and chip meal we ordered.

In the morning, the weather seemed worse than previously. This time were didn’t plan to hang around and we caught the 10:10am ferry back to Townsville where we planned to drive straight to Cairns. We drove for about an hour before we hit a small town called Ingham where we couldn’t go any further because the road was blocked due to flooding.

This had hampered our plans a little as it gave a fewer days in Cairns to sell Sandy the Van. We ask the road traffic person when the road would be clear and it wasn’t good news. He said it probably wouldn’t clear until 1pm the next day. It was about 2pm when we asked which meant we had to stay in Ingham for the night. There was nothing to do in this small town so time was hard to kill. Fortunately we found a public library where we could use the internet for free. In the evening we found our way to a supermarket where we met other camper van drivers stuck in this quiet town. We forget the names, but they included 3 aussie girls, 2 Dutch and 2 English lads. We ended up chilling out under some shelter of the supermarket with our camp chairs, some music and some canola candles to keep the mosquitoes away.

We got up nice and early the next day in Ingham to see if the road had cleared. It hadn’t cleared and we ask the road traffic person the same question we asked him yesterday and he he said it will clear the next day around 1pm. This was bad news to us, so we found some free internet to find another route to get there. We found one that may be passable all roads have been affected by the floods in one way or the other. It was about 500km extra driving, but we didn’t want to hang around and so we drove the long way  which included driving back an hour to Townsville, where we were previously and going quite a bit inland.

The road inland was quite interesting as it seemed like it was part of the outback. We got to see lots wild kangaroos, pigs, cattle and wallabies. We also must have counted about ten dead kangaroos that got hit by cars. We made it safely into Cairns at about 8 hours later, but the Sandy the van was feeling the strain from the long journey. Sandy was making funny noises but we was too tired to investigate and left it for the following day to sort out. We check into Gilligans Hostel at 11pm and go straight to bed after a tiring day.