We landed safe and sound in Cairns Australia, Woo hoo let the BBQ's begin!! After a bit of a dissapointing flight with asian company jetsta we arrived on Ozzy ground in the morning to let our Australian adventure begin with a short stop in Darwin. There was nothing especially bad about the flight its just that we had been looking forward to a flight with Quantas where you get flight time films and free magnum ice lollies, instead we got chicken and rice......seriously like we hadn't had enough!

We were to stay in Cairns for a week and to our happy surprise there had been a mistake with our dorm room booking and we were upgraded to a private room for free what a welcome. As a city Cairns was a little on the small side shall we say, having said that we found lots to occupy us. The first and best thing I loved about Cairns apart from the most amazing waether was the lagoon. A huge man made lagoon right on the esplanade or as we would say 'prom.' I was really surprised how much is catered for around the city, having never seen out door free BBQ's I was impressed enough just at the sight of that. However Cairns seems to go beyond that there was also running tracks, exersise stations, shower facilities, kids playgrounds and the most amazing skate board park I have ever seen. Even I as a some what fitness phobe was tempted to grab my trainers and join in, but instead I watched Andy go out for his run and was content with a bit of splashing about in the pool.

Unfortunately I got a bad cold while in Cairns so we didn't do all that much as even walking to the supermarket to get supplies even seemed to take it out of me. Great I was in the hottest climate I had ever experienced and I had a cold no sense in that! All I wanted was flu remedy and Andy was feeling the symptons to so we took what we thought was a cheap version of Lemsip style medicine. Lesson learnt when dossing up always read the directions, what we thought was just paracetomal was a herbal remedy full of garlic. For the next few days we just stunk of garlic and felt no better for it I might add.

We booked a trip for the end of the week to visit the barrier reef and just hoped we'd both be well enough to make a dive. We traveled to Port Douglas and managed a quick look around before boarding. My only regret is not spending more time there as it looked beautiful. I was really surprised at how tropical the North of Queensland is and Port Douglas looked like the ideal tropical holiday destination. We visited the reef with the Quicksilver company and took the trip to the outer reefs known as the ribbon reefs. The boat was amazing nothing like the tin can efforts we had been aboard in Thailand this was pure speed and luxuary. We had only booked in for one dive but once I knew I could equalise ok we booked in for all three. The reef was beautiful and we even saw a white tip shark. The last dive really did us in though as it was meant to be a drift dive where you jump from a moving boat into the current and just glide through the water with minimum effort. Unfortunately someone got the logistics a little wrong and we ended up swimming against the current. We all used double the amount of air we would normally and were absolutley shattered by the end of it. It was a great experience and I was able to pick up a huge shell we found and dance around with it like I thought I was ariel from the little mermaid, well its the closest experience I'll get!

Although Cairns didn't have a beach as such it had huge mud flats, I know that sounds really dull but it was home to some really beautiful wildlife like the Pelicans and herons and I loved just watching them. We were also always on the watch for a cheeky but very distant glimpse of a croc but never did manage to see one. The locals however were always willing to tell the stories about dogs being stalked on the beach and late night swims that ended in a croc feeding frenzy. The trees near the beach also served as the maternity wing of the bat world and they were full of baby flying foxes which was a spectacular sight. I cant end this blog woth out mentioning the infamous woolshed pub where we got free basic meals through our hostel everynight, its like you can never eat enough spaghetti bolognaise ; )