Due to our relatively short 8 day stay in a country the size of Australia we decided to just split our time between Sydney and the tropical town of Cairns at the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. It was still a full three hour flight just up the east coast. We stayed in our best hostel yet with a refreshing large pool and grass courtyard, leather lounge couches, and multiple large flat screens when the heat and humidity get to be too much in the afternoon.

We took the 8km Skyrail gondola type attraction with which we cruised a top the rainforest canopy below to a little touristy town. There we got an in depth tutorial of several thousand impressive native butterflies, and all the caterpillars they once were as they are bred everyday on site. We saw the cute old man looking koala bears sleeping around, some crocs staring at us mouths open, and hand fed a few kangaroos hopping around. We followed that with a visit to an open aviary with what seemed to be too many birds in place, and it became a bit unnerving even before I got pooped on. We did see the cassowary, which i think is closest thing to a dinosaur type bird still living staring intently into our eyes nearly standing at eye level. Think big scary emu with bigger and sharper claws and some impressive head gear and colors. We finished the day up with a ride back on a historic train high above the gorge and waterfalls in the rainforest.

The next day we left early for our catamaran out to the Great Barrier Reef. We went through quite the downpour, but coming out on the otherwise was bright sunshine and the reef. We stopped at two different reef areas and snorkeled for several hours seeing endless amounts of unusual and colorful fish and coral. It was truly an amazing experience of something that may not be around forever and I never wanted to bring my head out of the water.

After lounging in the pool for another half day we flew back into Sydney, and stayed in the more residential university area of Newtown with a few more places our style compared to Kings Cross. It was still the large party that is Sydney Mardi Gras and costumes were out in full force. We were tempted to a Greek/Australian restaurant that did not disappoint by a quality three piece playing Stevie Wonder and James Brown getting people up and dancing that were eating out on the patio. A good night's sleep and another culinary and coffee surprise in the morning at the restaurant we initially only went to for free Wi-Fi, which is incredibly rare here or New Zealand, put us back on an eight hour flight to Singapore to begin our month in Asia.