Townsville ups and downs!

On Saturday, Freya, Kyle and I went to the Museum of Tropical Queensland. There were a couple of main exhibitions there – one was on dinosaurs, in particular, dinosaur eggs and another on the HMS Pandora, which was the ship sent to find the crew of the HMS Bounty after the mutiny. The HMS Pandora exhibition was particularly interesting. The ship found a few crew members on Tahiti but missed finding the others on Pitcairn. It sank on the Great Barrier Reef and the survivors (including the ship’s cat!) made it to Timor on small boats though some of them died when they got there.

We then went along The Strand which is Townsville’s seafront. There are lots of little beaches there and we went to one called Rockpool which is actually a sea water swimming pool made to look like a rock pool! In the evening, some of the guys’ friends came over and we had a bit of a house party! We played Ring of Fire (oh oh – more drinking games!) and I made the mistake of having a shot of tequila before we started! I stayed up til about 10pm and then left them to it!

Sunday was truly a day of rest!! Apart from going for a mooch around the shopping centre near the house, I did next to nothing!! We stayed in and watched a DVD in the evening and I got myself ready for diving on Monday!

I was very excited when the taxi came to pick me up at 6.15am on Monday morning!! I was being picked up at the dive shop in town by a minibus from the dive centre. We were taken to the harbour where the dive centre had a lock-up with all their kit. There were 5 of us and we got sorted out with kit and completed all the necessary paperwork and then headed off on the boat to Magnetic Island, just off Townsville, to collect 5 other divers. It took 2 ½ hours to get to the site of the SS Yongala, which sank in 1913 in a cyclone. We moored up to the bow mooring and got ready for our first dive. The first dive was a bit of a struggle for me as there was a lot of current on the wreck but we stayed near the bow area and tucked in close to the wreck slightly out of the current. The second dive after lunch was much better as the current had died right down and we swam about 2/3 of the length of the wreck and back again. The wreck was stunning and it was covered in corals. We saw eagle rays, turtles, sea snakes and so many fish of all shapes and sizes! The fish did not seem to care that we were there and swam very close to us! The wreck is on a sandy bottom so is an artificial reef which is why it is so well populated with marine life. It really was a fantastic dive site!

We had another night in with a DVD but I was really tired and went to bed early as I was up again early for another day’s diving……..BUT that didn’t happen :-( I woke up at about 3am feeling a bit sick. I hardly slept at all the rest of the night and at 6am, I woke Freya to ask her to cancel my taxi as I didn’t feel well – at which point I threw up! I spent the rest of the morning throwing up and, to put it delicately, sitting on the toilet!!! I spent all day in bed trying my best not to die, which is what I felt like doing! Freya and Kyle really looked after me and I don’t know what I would have done without them! I felt a bit better by the evening but didn’t get up at all. I managed to drink water and eat a slice of dry toast! I thought I might have got food poisoning from some chicken I ate on Monday night but Kyle also had some and he was fine so it must have just been a bug I caught somehow :-(

I woke up this morning feeling much better but I do feel like I have been through 10 rounds with Mohamed Ali!! I went to the dive shop to get my dive kit (which I had left there after diving on Monday!) and it’s now washed and drying in the back garden. I was very sad not to have dived Wheeler Reef yesterday. The rest of my day will be spent chilling out and packing – as I’m off to Auckland tomorrow!! We are going to the cinema tonight. I’m treating everyone in the house and we’re going to see the new X-Men film :-)