In one of the few departures from the East Coast, the Oz Experience takes us to Kroombit, a small cattle ranch and camping sight. Of course, small is a relative term - when these 'jackeroos' round up their cattle they have to use first helicopters, then motorbikes, then the more traditional horse. The large ranches have to use spotter planes. In any case, all manner of amusing activities were planned for use for the evening and morning we were going to spend ther...

Next stop on the magical mystery tour was Arlie Beach, basically a 300 metre strip of hostels and bars. Life here revolves around drinking and sailing. I was there to indulge in the latter, mixed with a little of the former. After a heavy night out I went to board my home for the next two days, the bizarely named ex-racing boat Freight Train. Despite the passengers consisting of 15 girls and 3 guys, I still managed to find myself sharing a double bunk with a blok...

Heading south once more, we came to Townsville, one of the larger random backpacker towns. Normally a team of hardened travellers such as ourselves would have gone to stay on Magnetic Island just off the coast, which supposedly has 350 days of sunshine a year, making a nice break from having rain pissing down all the time. Unfortunately it was Easter weekend, which meat the every Aussie and his wallaby had descended on our sunny paradise, leaving us honest, hard-...

Well children, it's been a while since I've written about my ramblings, mainly because I'm lazy, but partially because this has been one the most intense and action-packed periods of my short life. The story picks up with me leaving Cairns and getting the bus down to Mission Beach, a small no-wheres-ville populated only by drunken backpackers and a strange number of strange kiwis. Along the way we stopped of at a crocodile farm, where we had the chance to hold a ...

I have spent the last three days in Cairns. Cairns is the rainiest place I have ever been. Thats what you get for going to a rainforest. The three days have been spend largely uneventfully, mostly wandering around the small town centre and looking everywhere for the funnel web spider that will inevitably get me. It'll have to be particularly cunning to outwit me though. The sheer amount of Japanese people and shops here is astounding - took me a while to absorb...