still pretty good. We saw a couple of very small rays, lots of very colourful fish, and a few really big fish who startled us at one point!! The walk back was quite hilly and long, but the scenery was ace, and we reckoned we could have spent a while longer here, but our train was leaving the next day, and so two nights was all we had!!

We packed up the next day, the hardest part was removing all of the tiny green frogs from the tent!! They had been our constant companions during our stay, and we had to be very carefully not to take any of them with us!! Arriving back in Townsville we decided to get the bus back to the station rather than face the backbreaking trek!! We had a bit of a wait at the station, but it wasn’t long before we were crawling our way towards Prosperine, where we would be transferred by bus to Airlie Beach. We decided to have a meal in the restaurant on the train, as the

prices were reasonable, and it would help to pass the time. We were pleasantly surprised at just how delicious the food was - complete with school style mashed potato and pumpkin scoops!! We also took advantage of the showers on the train, which were also brilliant, better than some campsite ones!!! It really did hammer home what a shame it was that this train went so slowly!! In every other way it was perfect!!

Airlie Beach
2nd - 4th March

As we were arriving quite late we’d phoned ahead and booked a site at Koalas, a hostel with camping spaces. It wasn’t the nicest place we’d stayed, but it was fairly cheap so it would do. It was obvious that Airlie beach was quite a party place - there were lots of bars with happy