I can't believe I've been away for over a month now! It's gone so quickly and I've now been in Australia for almost a week.

I've spent the last 5 days doing my PADI diving course, with the last 3 days being on a boat on the Great Barrier reef and it was amazing! I am now a certified Open Water Diver. Over the last 3 days I've done 9 dives, and seen the most incredible things. The first 4 dives were part of the training but after that we were left pretty much to go it alone. On pretty much every dive I saw turtles, manta rays, and little Nemo fish, plus I was swimming on my last dive and a shark crossed my path about 4m in front of me!! I also did a night dive where you each have a torch and are accompanied by an instructor who points things out to you. It was so peaceful and defintely one of the highlights - although all the dives were the highlights!!

I'm now back in Cairns and have some chill out time after the excitement of the last few days. On Saturday I join up with a tour which will take me from Cairns down the Coast to Cairns in 11 days and which will include sailing in the Whitsundays and a visit to Fraser Island.

Hope all is good with everyone. Keep you updates coming!

Photos can be found at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82597&l=5a3a2&id=639730629 as I still can't upload them onto here for some reason.

xx