After a really sleepless night I wanted to have my breakfast-toast, but realized, that my cooling bag had been cut, and there was nothing left but the plastic cover of the  toast,  spread all over  the sand. There had been thieves at night! :O But what kind of thieves?

Having thought about it for a while, brooding over what kind of thief would take upon himself to walk 3 km just to steal a package of toast, I came to the conclusion, that the thieves couldn’t have been human beings, it must have been wallabies or oppossums from the island. Curse them! I shouted at the animals, because I couldn’t enjoy my breakfast today. 🙁 That’s pure wildlife ! After that fiasco I washed myself in the little creek, I didn’t want to risk to go into the sea alone because of Stingers. (Jan was still sleeping) At 7:00 am I woke him up, and we started to pack our stuff. We left the tent and some of our clothes behind. :/ Our plans for the day were to drive to Nelly Bay for snorkelling. There is a special snorkelling track -, to walk the Fortes walk and to snorkel at Florence Bay. We thought we could hitchhike all the way, but after one hour waiting on the road, we only got a lift to Nelly Bay.  Down there we decided to hire a scooter for one day.  🙂

It was much fun to ride from one bay to another, and I decided to cancel the Fortes walk because of my sunburn. ( the peeling of my whole face-skin had started  :/ ) Hopefully it will have healed when our Whitsundays trip will start.. :/ The sun wasn’t shining today ( good for me and my sunburn on the one hand but on the other hand it put me in a bad mood.:/ But Jan and I managed the day very well, we went snorkelling, had lunch in Horseshoe Bay, where I published my blog, and where I got back the deposit for hiring the scooter.

At 5:15 pm we caught the ferry back to Townsville and arrived there at 6:00 pm. All in all it was an exciting trip to Magnetic Island for both of us, we saw beautiful beaches, lovely bays, a lot of fish, hitchhiked four times and had a nice ride on a scooter. 🙂 For dinner we went to the Seaview Hotel in Townsville. I ate „The Strand“ pizza and enjoyed the Sunday nightlife. At 2:00 am we returned to the car and slept in it. 🙂

After having woken up this morning we quickly packed our stuff and drove to the ferry to Magnetic Island. We caught it at 10:45 am and arrived on the island around 11:30.

There we went to a roundabout and waited untill somebody gave us a lift. (Had to wait for 1 and a half hour :/) This time it was a nice young man, who had moved to the island two years ago, he was called Steven. He was very friendly and showed us around the island.  He asked where we wanted to go and we just said „Snorkelling please“. Our first stop was at a viewing platform watching  some rock wallabies. I took some photos (first wildlife wallabies in Australia) 

and we drove to Horseshoe Bay (10 minutes drive).

There we saw a very nice beach and got out of the car.

Steven drove on and Jan went swimming (I couldn’t because of my sunburn 🙁 ) but I started to plan our route around the island (Arthur Bay and Westpoint) and when Jan returned, he accepted my plans. Before we continued our trip I had to buy some snorkel equipment (left mine in Bundaberg :/) but never mind. 🙂 The new one is better. We hitchhiked to Arthur Bay, this time got a lift from a lovely nice lady. 🙂  At Arthur Bay  we had to choose which way to go.

1. Option: A track that takes us to a saltwater creek :/

2. Option: A track that takes us to a private house. :/

We chose the first option and bravely passed through the creek ( it wasn’t deep but considering  all our luggage, a little adventure 🙂 )  We succeeded and saw the wonderful Arthur Bay.

A really amazing place, surrounded by big rocks and lovely trees, full of birds and wallabies. 🙂  First of all we went snorkelling. See the photos, there wasn’t such a large number of fish as we had expected, because the sea was rough and, on top of that, I happened to cut my foot by touching  a coralreef. The waves had crashed me against the rocks and I started to get scared because I’ve never faced a situation like that before, and Jan  was out of sight, far away :/ ( probably out of the water, because his swimming mask was leaking)

unique fish MCus Germanius^^

I managed to get out of this frightening situation and, luckily, managed to return from my snorkel-trip  without suffering from severe injuries. 🙂

… but I had to bandage my heel.

We decided to camp at Arthur Bay because we were too exhausted after having climbed up the rocks :P.

Standing on top of the highest rock I felt like …

the king of the world :P)

Chilling in the jacuzzi

As we woke up at Robert’s place (had arrived last night and went to bed early, got sunburn :/ ), we went into his jacuzzi and ate our pancakes in it (had made them by ourselves before we went outside :P) ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=226086380897250&saved ) Here some pictures of his house. 😀 Enjoy them 😀

Today we checked out of our hostel and gave a German guy (Mert) a lift to the airport in Townsville (1 hour drive) 🙂

Jan, Mert and me in front of Townsville airport

The Strand

In Townsville Jan and I decided to go to the beach called ‚The Strand‘ 🙂 We parked our car and spent the whole day on the beach. 🙂

My new ….

This day I made 9 bins in 12 hours:). My goal for the day was 8 and I did one more. I was very proud of me :). After mango picking I quickly changed  my clothes and went off to my second job: first day at Dominos‘ pizza delivery. When I had arrived there a guy was waiting for me with a friendly welcome, introduced me to everything I would have to do and accompanied me to my first delivery.

…uniform 🙂

We delivered three pizzas, one garlic bread and a sprite by car. 🙂 Having  returned to  Dominos‘  I had to wash some dishes. It took about an hour, when  I had to do my  first pizza delivery all by myself. I got the Dominos‘ car and typed the address in the navigation system.:) Then I delivered two pizzas, one garlic bread and a coke to a young lady. 🙂 It took me about 10 minutes and the boss was very happy with my service. Later on he tested me on a scooter to find out whether I can drive one.

Me on the scooter:)

Easily I passed the test and he told me, that he will send me a note as soon as he needs my help this week.

Sapburn :(Mangorush:/

When I woke up at 8 am this day ( I had a day-off from mango-picking)

I started to cut my hair today.

Before having my hair cut:$

After having my hair cut (undercut):)

I was just preparing myself for jogging, having changed my clothes, when I got a call from a man who needed a worker for today. So I changed again my clothes, and got picked up by Jimmy, who needed some help for painting his living-room and cleaning his tools.

Jimmy at work

Living-room before I had painted it

Living-room after I had painted it (nice colour) 🙂

The living-room (nice house)

I had been working for 3 hours and earned some good cash for the day. 🙂 Then Jimmy dropped me off at the hostel and I did some jogging.  Then I went shopping, expired my stay at the hostel, and applied for some jobs in Australia and New-Zealand 🙂

The following week I had been working everyday from 5:30 am to 5:30 pm. After 4 days I got my first mangoburn (on the knees),it burnt and itched very hard.

I

Every morning I woke up with pain in my fingers but my only thought was to earn as much money as possible and not taking too much damage to myself . :/ On Sunday I became a cherrypicker (it was meant as a gift from the host-father, because I was a good, reliable and strong worker. Cherrypicking means, that you are picking mangoes from a machine (like a crane) which you can navigate by your feet (there are three pedals, the left one for going right, the right one for going left, and the one in the middle for moving  up and down). 🙂 It sounds easy but in fact, it isn’t. I started to work… but it wasn’t long, when I happened to crash heavily against a mango tree and ended up with a very huge cut in my finger ( later on that day one of the other cherrypickers broke his finger, because of such an accident, so I have to call myself lucky). Later on my water bottle (10L) fell down, and my lunch box, too. :/ No meal and no drinking for 12 hours? :0  After 5 hours of hard picking-work without having anything to drink, luckily the supervisor gave me some water. 🙂  I was going to spend 13 hours on this machine,  all alone, in the middle of mangoe rows. I felt absolutely lost and lonely, while always, at the same time, I  had to keep control over the machine. :/  After two hours I  started to talk to myself,  because I was so desperate and needed to get myself in a better mood. I started to make fun of myself and let my mind wander ( family and friends I MISS YOU SO MUCH 🙁 <3 ) I was slowly starting to cry  and  felt relieved afterwards. Towards the end of  that day I had filled 3 bins ( 35 AUD per bin), that was definitely not as much as I had hoped to earn, and worst of all:  I got sap burns in my face, too. I wasn’t satisfied at all

My camera has given up so I couldn’t take photos while I was cherrypicking but I will  try to buy a new one as soon as possible. 🙂

Today I got up at 4:15 am to prepare for my first day on the mango farm (Pappalados Farm).

The bus (van) picked me up at 4:30 and we drove half an hour to the farm (3 other guys from  my hostel and me ). As we arrived there, we saw many guys with spots in their faces and I had already heard about the mango sap burn and mango rash.

So I asked them whether mango rash looks like that. They agreed. I felt very uncomfortable after that information but, nevertheless started to work after a short introduction by the boss. I was in a team of 5 guys. There are four working-steps in picking mangoes: One guy drives the tractor ( on the tractor is a huge tank with water in it), two guys pick the mangoes from the top of a trailer with long sticks with nets at the end ( like cherry picking sticks), one guy washes the mangoes, and the last one collects the mangoes from the ground or the ones, the two others couldn’t reach.

In our team we agreed to the rule that each guy has to do each working step  and that he has to change to the next step, when one bin is full. It’s paid per bin ( 100 AUD per bin divided by 5 guys). :I It’s okay. After 5 hours working and doing every working-step twice the first one got a sap burn on his finger. It looked awful, there were blisters all over his finger, and he was suffering terrrible pain. (The caustic sap of the mangoes may not come into contact with your skin, because it causes really serious burns). Once the stem is removed from the fruit, the mango releases this highly caustic sap, which can burn both the fruit and your skin. To avoid a sap burn and preventing a mango rash you always  have to pick mangoes away from your body. 🙂 But sometimes it’s hard, and you are always in a hurry, because you and the whole team  want to earn good money, and so, if you are not very careful, you can easily get a sap burn. After 13 hours work with one break (drinking, eating and taking off your wet clothes, wet because of sweat) I hadn’t got a mango sap burn and returned – very happy and exhausted – to my hostel and enjoyed eating a mango with Jan ). Wow, they are so tasty, especially since I know what hard work it is to get them. Tomorrow I will work again 🙂 Hopefully I won’t get burned neither from the sun nor from the mangoes. 😛

Sorry about the blurred pictures, my camera got water in it and now the display doesn’t work  anymore.