On the morning of the 16th we landed in Darwin and transferred to Cairns via Australian Immigration who confiscated the packed lunch we'd cleverly decided to bring from Asia. 2 bags of fresh fruit, yoghurts and sandwiches all gone! Fortunately they didn't find our drugs or firearms so it wasn't all bad news.

The weather was incredible when we arrived in Cairns so we headed for the beach. For the entire summer the sea here is full of deadly box jellyfish and so a swimming lagoon has been built on the edge of the bay. It was even kitted out with free public BBQ's - awesome!

The next morning we left for a day trip of the Great Barrier Reef. Our boat was a small sailing vessel called the Ocean free. The trip was incredible and we managed to see a few black tipped reef sharks, one with a small yellow pilot fish on it's nose which gets pushed around on its bow wave to save it from swimming!

The following day was our trip to Cape Tribulation, which is where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef. This is quite far to the North and feels miles from civilisation. We travelled to Mossman Gorge where we did a small trek to a swimming hole. It was absolutely freezing but pretty refreshing. We then drove to a lookout point in the mountains which looked over the Daintree River to the point where it meets the sea. Here our guide showed us a very strange trick with the local green ants. We caught an ant by the head and licked its bum. It tastes of lemon and lime! Jo managed to psyche herself up enough to have a go and after a lot of squirming eventually planted a big lick on the ant! We then went to the Daintree River for a crocodile spotting cruise. Our guide said that due to the time of the year we were very unlikely to see anything other than a few 'logodiles'. As it happened we got lucky. We found a large male croc who had killed a ferral pig on the river bank and was defending his territory. A few minutes later another croc showed up and the two started fighting. After successfully defending his pig he then spotted the boat and started chasing us. Everyone on the boat, including the guide, nearly messed themselves! The croc then submerged and we faced a few tense minutes of standing in the middle of the boat so we wouldn't be eaten! We then travelled to our hostel right in the middle of the rainforest and stayed the night.

The next day we left for Mission Beach and had an introduction to "Goon". It is basically a fortified wine that comes in a box and 5 litres can be bought for around $10....you can imagine how it tastes. Not only is it strong but it also has an extreme memory erasing effect which Dan can testify to after waking up the next day fully clothed and confused as to how he got to bed! We made a trip down the beach to the local stinger net to swim in the sea but after the hour and a half in the baking sun we were too tired to swim and just sat next to the nets with our Calippos!

The next day we headed to Magnetic Island, which was extremely quiet. We were only there for one night but still managed to do everything there was to do.....ie nothing! It was very picturesque though and we managed to catch up on some sleep before we headed for our sailing trip on the Whitsundays.