I feel silly asking this, looked over a lot of documentation no solution, all of the training videos i have watched have had a ground level grid, how can i get one? And also, i was told something about an island demo level to mess around with making, is that no longer available?
Google search came up with several answers to your problem.
Read this Unity - Manual: Scene view View Options toolbar
Towards the bottom there talks about the three icons and what they do. If that doesn’t fix it then something more is messed up.
All tutorial/unity sample things are here http://unity3d.com/gallery/demos/demo-projects