September 20 Townsville, Family and Community Day, and Travel to Cairns

We woke up after our tiring day of traveling to Townsville, and found a nearby breakfast place where Avery could quickly get us some food. After scarfing down our breakfast of pancakes, we set out to the Reef HQ aquarium. It took us roughly 20 minutes to arrive there from where we were, before we knew it, we were gazing at the towering building of Reef HQ. We paid for admission, and went inside. We were immediately met with the astounding sight of the aquariums filled with coral and fish living inside of those habitats. Mason eavesdropped on a tour group and reported to us that 1625 species of fish and 1400 coral reef species. However fish was a broad category, there were also mollusks, sea snakes, dolphins, sharks and more. After seeing all of the tanks that were available, we decided to eat a quick lunch at a hotel that is floating on the water.

We got on a boat to take us the the hotel floating over the great barrier reef, also where we would eat lunch. The Four Seasons Hotel was built floating on the water where you can do activities like snorkeling and scuba diving. Something special that we found about this resort however, is that there is a tennis court floating on the ocean as well. Avery challenged Dylan to a match on the floating tennis court, and we were able to get a small discount thanks to Family and Community Day. Family and Community Day was a day created to allow families and the community to enjoy a leisure day off of work to spend more time together. It was nearly impossible to play for the waves kept rocking the court, influencing the ball's bounce. After a few games, Avery had to excuse himself because he was beginning to feel seasick. Then we decided to find something to eat. There was nothing particularly exotic on the pallet, it mostly consisted of seafood. We all had a great meal except for Diego, who got sick after eating too much clam chowder.


After a nice meal we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day. So we decided to mill around in Strand Park. We decided to take a walk on one of the trails in the park, one of these trails was called castle hill. This was a two mile walk that went one-way that's accessible by cars, walkers, and bikers. The path was quite crowded and Mason commented on the many rules that they repeatedly have on signs that state safety concerns and rules that they have on the trail. After we finished the trial, we ate dinner at a nearby small restaurant where we all got our own  variation of sandwich. We quickly finished eating and tried to get a head start toward Cairns, where we would be leaving for our trip. As we left, we were regretting that we had to leave.