As the plane descended on Cairns we had amazing views of the city and the even more impressively one of the natural wonders of the world - The Great Barrier Reef! After landing we checked into a friendly little backpackers hostel called Jayjays. At the time we didn't realise we'd end up loving the place and staying there for nearly two weeks! We immediately felt at home and made many friends there. For the first week or so we just relaxed and enjoyed living in a place with loads of people to talk to. In the evenings it was customary to go to the Woolshed bar in Town. This was an amazing place which had a good atmosphere and you could get a huge steak with the works and a pint for $10 - 5 pounds! After everyone had eaten the place turns into a nightclub where everyone gets up and dances on the tables.

We also had a great time losing money in games of poker. We only used to play for a few dollars a time, but it was good fun, especially because jack was so bad at it that we all took his money. We did this for the first week or so along with swimming pool gladiator fights / whirlpool races and all you can eat bbqs.

One day we decided to take a diving trip out to the The Great Barrier Reef. We went on the Osprey boat, which as it is the quickest of all the boats gets out to the reef before anyone else, and therefore gets the clearest waters and better chances of seeing things. This was our first dive since our PADI course and it turned out to be a great one. In total we had three dives and a hour or so snorkelling. The reef looked absolutely spectacular with bright vivid colours and fish of all shapes and sizes. On the dives we saw a couple of Reef Sharks, one which swam right up past me. So close in fact that i could have touched it, i was so shocked and scared at the same time i nearly spat my reg out. We also saw huge eels and some massive fish. Luckily me and Jack had decided to invest in a underwater slr camera that was for hire. This gave us the option of video and some superb quality underwater photos. These were some of the best dives ive done especially at the end of the last dive where there was only me and another guy who had enough oxygen to stay down. He had done quite a bit of diving here before and showed me a cool spot where you could swim through huge cave like archways and then be in a steep sided gulley where the coral rose vertically up. The only down side to the dive was we didnt see any Turtles, fortunately we had made plans to go to the Whitsundays in a week or so, where its almost guaranteed to see them.

Back in Cairns we realised how much quicker Australia drains your money than Asia so we headed out on a job hunt. It was difficult getting a job becuase our time limit was so short and because we didnt have working visas. Fortunately one job came up about two miles walk from the hostel fitting tyres on trailers. The Job started at 7 in the morning but we had to set off at about half 6. The first day we got there the place had been burgled the previous night so we were sent straight back while he sorted stuff with the cops. The next two days we went again only to be turned away with excuses. In the end it was obvious we wern't going to get any work so we gave up and had a lie in.

We had one funny experience that night where we awoke to the guy in the lower bunk screaming his head off shouting fire, then falling back to sleep. We found out in the morning he had had a nightmare, but at the time we were so confused.

Lastly we booked the Premier Bus Service from Cairns down to Sydney with unlimited stop offs on the way. However before departing down south we booked a two day tour up to Cape Tribulation for the following day.