G'day mate! (hahahaha)

Well we arrived in Cairns safe and sound but very tired as we arrived from a night flight that went via Darwin, so no sleep for us! We went straight to our hostel and already i was on the lookout for spiders (cos i know they all want to come and get me of course!) The hostel turned out to be pretty good as we had a free evening meal included down at the woolshed (the backpackers place to be). The free meal was of a decent portion but for just $7 we upgraded everynight to yummy steak! We eat pretty well for skint backpackers dont we! As soon as we arrived in Oz we found the nearest supermarket and couldnt wait to buy lots of yummy food so we can finally cook for ourselves after 2 months of constantly eating out! We managed to get a cool bag with ice blocs and everything, its just like travelling down to cornwall (gota pack lots of food for the journey!) Although being really excited about being in Oz we quickly realised that Cairns had nothing to do, but was a good base to go to other places, so we decided to hire a car for later on in the week! For our first few days we went to the lagoon (even though the weather was terrible) and just chilled watching movies at the hostel, in the evenings we went to the wollshed so that adam could attend the wet t shirt competition, unfortunatley we left before it started (poor adam!)

So hiring the car turned out to be alot of fun, we hired the cheapest possible which was a tiny little diatsu (cant spell). I got to drive all the way there, which was so much fun, although i mustve been going pretty slow cos people kept overtaking me! Adam drove all the way back, but managed to complain about my driving the whole day! (not sure we will be hiring a car again!) We stopped off at various desolate beachs on the way up, but our first official stop was at the small village of Daintree. It was such a quiet and relaxing place to be, we decided to do a river cruise which turned out to be more fun than we both expected! We got to see wild crocs and snakes up in the trees (try and spot them in the photos of the trees, bet ya cant!) and we also got to see a really rare bird that hasnt had any sightings in ages, but it mustve liked us cos it kept flying around near our boat. Next we went up to Cape Tribulation, which was amazing! We saw a cassowary bird which is usually quite a shy but vicious animal, but this one wanted to make friends with the tourists and decided to do a bit of sunbathing on the beach with us! We did a short walk whilst we were there, where we saw loadsa wildlife, including a baby cassowary and tons of fish.

The next day we had our greyhound bus booked to go to Townsville. I think this journey was one of the most eventful we have had so far! Our grumpy driver kept telling everyone off for anything, so when i needed to pee i didnt dare ask him, it took me nearly half an hour to build up the courage to ask him to stop, and even then he said we wouldnt be stopping for another half hour! mean mean man! Anyway moving on, just before it was time for us to swap drivers, the grumpy man decided to hit a kerb whilst driving, and then as it that wasnt bad enough he hit a sign post, we all found this very amuzing! After our driver swap we had some hope of arriving safley but no such luck. The new driver was pressing the cruise control button in an attempt to try and close the doors to the bus, the grumpy man was also showing him hoe the bus worked (just like a first driving lesson!). So we set on our way with the newbie driver who came quite close to ramming a car on a roundabout, on the next roundabout he was inches away from hitting a car, the woman in the passanger seat of the car mustve been so scared, she turned white and threw her arms in the air (quite funny although serious). we did arrive at our destination safely and got a ferry straight to magnetic island.

Magnetic island was great we got to snorkel the great barrier reef just by kayacking out to sea, we sunbathed by the pool, and also did the forts walk, which was a bush walk showing you how the Aussies where preparing for the war, we walked right to the top in time for sunset, and with a 360 view it was incredible! We did literally run down though cos we didnt want to do it in the dark and we had a bus to catch! We had a great dorm room on the island and us and our room mates went out for drinks everynight, it turned out to be quite interesting bunch of people, as there was 3 British, 1 irish, 2 poles and 1 israeli, so with quite a variety we had some good nights.

The next place on our list was Airlie beach (whitsundays), which is where we are now, we have booked a 1 day tour to sail the islands tomorrow and then off to Fraser for some whale watching. We went to another lagoon today, but the sun disappeared as soon as we put our sun cream on (sods law) so we didnt stay out for too long! And all this brings us right up to now, so we hope you have enjoyed our blog and we will update it again soon! Dont forget to look at our photos and videos!

Love and miss you all

Sam and Adam xxxx