we (me and a bunch of friends from my hall) went on a maggie adventure today!!  maggie is what the locals call magnetic island, its a small island thats about a 20min ferry ride away from townsville.  we woke up early(ish) and hopped on the bus...which was apparently the wrong bus to take, since it took 45 mins instead of just 20 mins to get into town.  but once we got to maggie, we met up with the boat that was supposed to take us around the island ALL DAY for 65 bucks, but ended up only being 50 bucks cuz the uncle was super boiz cheeehu!!!  anyways, we got to cruise maggie island zones all day, snorkel, adventure, cruise on the beach, check out the scenery and cruise boat zones with him.  it was pretty sick, i tried to take as many pics as possible.  the water was super cold, i only had my 1.5mm wetsuit top with me but i wish i brought my full budy 3/2 wettie the water was that cold.  not quite as cold as cali water, but when you're just snorkeling and cruisin on the surface it got pretty cold.  i tried shooting with my gopro but i dont have the dive housing so the pics didnt turn out too good.  the water was also kinda dirty.  the weather wasn't the greatest either; it was overcast and rainy for part of the time, and super sunny and nice the other parts.  i used mostly my gopro for the pics, i was too scared of dropping my phone in the water haha.  i ended up just hanging the gopro from one of the poles up front on the boat for the majority of the time and putting it on the "take a picture every 10 seconds" mode and letting it do its own thing while i cruised and checked out the scenery.  we got to do a bit of fishing for a bit, but not too much.  we saw some sick fish/eagles and got to feed the batfish pizza and the eagles some of the bait we had.  we also got to check out some of the shark traps (we weren't really supposed to be doing this but we're cool kids and soul rebelz) the babylon government set to protect the tourists and wipe out the entire shark population near maggie.  one of the lines had a 8ft tiger shark on it that was almost dead, i got pretty pissed when i saw that they were killing it just cuz it was by popular swimming zones.  they said it was used for "research" but that sounds like the japanese killing whales for "research" as well.  so babylon.  basically they just set a whole line of bouys down and attached a long chain  to it, and crimped a huge hook on the end and leave the whole line set 365/24/7.  they check it every 2-3 days to kill any sharks they catch and rebait the hooks.  anyways, i'll cut my rant off there before i say something really politically incorrect or something and let you guys check out the pics/vids instead.  i also got some pics from some of the adventures we've been going on around campus.  enjoi

mcgyver'ed duct tape flashlight moped zones

DEAD WALLABY BY MY HALL

live wallaby!!! also near my hall, the campus is loaded with these guys

aussie beer!!  i'm starting to document all the beers i try in oz, here's the first entry

aussie beer journal entry #2

papa jamo, model status on ferry zones

maggie!!

some artsyfartsy panorama zones

some kinda snapper lookin fish, our boat guide called it the "mother-in-law fish" cuz its apparently what you give to your mother-in-law when you catch it hahaha

gopro zones

cruisin boat zones

tigah shark!!! so babylon