well, in the last week we seem to have done so much, can't belive i've been out here nearly 2 weeks already, it's just flown by! We left Cairns and headed down to mission beach where Alex wanted to do a skydive. Couldn't get into the hostel we wanted so the travel agent booked us into the 'mission beach retreat' which sounds a lot nicer than it actually is!! arrived at the bus station to find 3 minibuses waiting to pick people up, 2 were brand new and the one at the back looked like it was about 20 years old and about to break down any minute . . . guess which one was picking us up?! wanted to cry when we saw our room, it looked like an old hospital ward with 12 people cramped into one room, a massive difference to where we had stayed in cairns! although it ssemed awful at the time we ended up having a really great few days - saw some wallabies's in the fields at dusk, watched alex fall from the sky onto the beach, had our 1st aussie bbq and had a campfire on the beach at night.

Then onto magnetic island, thought our hostel choice couldn't get any worse until we saw our room here!!! the place we stayed was lovely, great pool and bar, right oin the beach, although the rooms were awful, unclean and smelly - our standards have massively dropped in the last few days! although we hadd a really great bunch of people in the room, some guys from the uk who had been working as chefs in sydney and an irish couple on a year out and chris and leanne, (chris has joined us on the way to airlie and is joining us sailing this week). had lots of fun, playing drinking games and out to a full moon party on another hostel on the island. Also saw some wild koalas on a walk up into the national park, a mum with a baby sitting in the tree right in front of us!

Then onto Airlie beach where we are now, my favourite town we have hit so far - FULL of backpackers, lovely beach and loads going on. Its the gateway to the whitsunday islands which is a must for all backpackers on the east coast. we've booked our 2 night sailing trip to leave on thursday so it will be nice to have a few days to chill here before we leave. And very luckily we managed to book a 'deluxe ' cabin at our hostel - not what anyone would usually call deluxe but its lovely compared to what we have had recently, at least its clean and doesnt smell!!! seem to have nice people in it too, played card games with a nice german couple last night who leave for their boat trip on friday.

very excited about the sailing, hope everyone is well, photos will follow soon.