alright mate (the australian way of sayiing hello, what's up?)

my first week in australia comes to an end ... i must confess, i was a bit lazy the first days ... travelling for about 6 weeks in asia got me rather tired, so when i arrived in cairns on saturday morning i slept the almost first two days (of course, i had a short break for going out at saturday evening *g*) nightlife is very busy here, there is every night big party ... i have the feeling, the australien and the irish tourists (there are a lot of irish pubs here) compete in the game: who is the first completely drunken? *gg*

monday was big action here ... because of the tsunami alert ... at about 10 am the guy from the reception came into our room and said we should leave the coast (my hostel is direct at the coast) to move in the backland ... there has been a big earthquake at solomon islands and for the whole australian east coast there is tsunami alert ... so we packed our valuables and got by bus in the backland to an other hostel ... but for me, it seemed to be rather an evacuation exercise than a real evacuation ... there were no big traffic jams, no screaming people ... nothing! after one hour we went back to our hostel and everything was done ... later i heard, the wave has fladded down ... i read in the internet the wave is going to new zealand ... i don't really know what happened with the tsunami, but anyway, the main thing is it didn't catch australia's east coast at all ;))

on tuesday i had (despite the tsunami the day before) two dives at the f***ing good great barrier reef ;)) i went there by boat and because of the rough sea, i got seasick ... damn, diving is such a great sport, why do you have to go by boat to the f***ing best dive sites? ... finally after 2 hours on this boat, we arrived a small sand island, where only thousands of birds live ... we had there two dives, but as i'm not really experienced in diving i had one intro-dive and one free dive ... we only went about 8-9 metres depth, but we could see so much animals, coralls, a small reef shark, some clown fish (yes, i found Nemo *g*) and many other fish whose name i don't know ... on the way back on crew member remembered about my seasickness and gave me 2 tablets ... so the way back was ok ;)

arrived in cairns at 5 pm and at 6:30 pm i had to be at the bus station for the bar bounce ... that's a guided tour through some pubs in cairns, but at least the tour started only 8:30 so there was no need for a hurry, although they said it start at 6:30 ... but anyway, had to pay 10 australien dollars (6.5 euros) for a big BBQ, some free drinks ... at the beginning it was quite strange, it seemed, that nobody wants to join, but finally it was real fun ... played two fun-games ... the first was called cane-toad-race (toad: frog, cane: from sugar-cane ... the australian imported a lots of frogs to protect the sugarcanes from insects ... but as the frogs had no natural enemies, the frogs became a big problem here ...): you could buy a frog for some bucks (bucks=dollars) and then the frogs had to jump out of the circle as fast as possible .. the winner takes it all, and got the pot (i think it was about 20 bucks, and there were 6 or 7 players, so not real a big loss for each) ... the second game was a bit more "sexual" ;)) i don't know the name, i call it "blowjob-game" ;)) every man with a long pants (trousers) had to come on stage on in front of every guy one girl had to knee down ... then every girl got a bubble gum and had to move it from one leg to the other leg of the man ... of course, inside of the pants and without any help from the guy ;))) and after this journey they girl had to chew the gum and try to make a big bubble ... so when i'm back in austria, i know two good party games ;))))))))))

wednesday i did nothing special, except of washing my clothes and meet one french girl and one german guy to talk about sharing a car for going down the coast ... but after some thinking we decided today not to go together ... it is too expensive, would cost about 350 bucks each for 2 weeks ... moreover we don't have the same plans either, so i baught today a bus pass for cairns-melbourne (f***, thats 4500 km in the bus!!!!) for 290 bucks ... tomorrow i will do the first part of the tour, going to townsville and then straight ahead to magnetic island staying there for 2 days ... and of course, it's easter time here and everything is becoming more and more expensice (especially rental cars)

ok, i must confess, i didn't make many fotos of cairns, only a few, but anyway i will upload them ...

cu soon,

yours christoph