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Nim in Oz
After a lazy day in Airlie Beach of swimming in the lagoon and washing, we went for a group meal out to this cool bar where i ate my first nice tasting meal in ages!! The food here really isn't that great but not to worry.
5.30am start the next day to travel upto Cairns. It was all day coach journey wthrough fields and mountains and typical queensland scenery before arriving at cairns Serpent hostel at 5pm. The hostel is one of the nicer ones which we have stayed in which is good as we're here for 6 days in total! After feeding we all headed out to check out Cairns. the city isn't that big but its a really torist friendly city but lots of pubc, clubs, cafes and shops!
A stlightly later start on Sunday of 8.am woooo!! today we headed out to and Aboringinal centre. The centre was layed in a way that gave background and history to the aboringinals before showing us the damage of the white people and the ways their culture had been affected. this information was given to us through a combined film and a theatre performance. it was really powerful and was shocking to see the suffereing which they had been through and the effects that this still had on the aboringinal people today! Anyway the point of the centre was to show people how proud they were of their culture. We were shown dances and given lessons in spear and boomerang throwing. We were also shown how to make medicines from the jungle and how to play a didgeridoo. The experience had been and interesting one and i wasn't really sure how i felt when i left and now i think im just shocked my the damaged that has been caused to a whole race of people simply because we didn't understand them.
but anyway amausing story about the reason behind the kangaroos name. A man saw a kangaroo jumping through the plains and asked an aboriginal man what it was called, the aboringinal man kept saying kangaroo! the white man took this to mean the name of the animal when in actual fact the aboringinal man was saying i don't know what your saying, i dont understand!! hehehe
After a spot of lunch in town we had an appointment at reef teach centre where an amusing irish man gave an amazingly enthusiastic presentation about the reef and the fish and coral! we learnt how to identofy the fish and coral easily which was a great help the next day when we were on the reef!!
Monday morning another early start to meet our boat to take us out onto the reef! the boat ride was a bumpy one and a fair few didn't cope to weel with the ride. One girl suffered so badly that in the afternoon she took a helicopter ride home cos couldn't face the journey home! :( we soptted at the first reef for about 3 hours. here we were briefed on scuba diving. I felt confident after the briefing that i could do it no worries. But this all soon changed once i was kitted up and on the edge of the boat ready to go into the water, i was so nervous. Anyway i plunged into the water and met by instructor about a metre under. i took out my mouth piece and put it back in again correctly and felt ok about it but suddly i started to panic and had to go back upto the surface. I tried again to go into the water but as soon as i was under the water i felt scared again, i didn't feel comfortable or safe. i was extremely disappointed with myself for not doing it but im definately going to give it another go one day!! Thankfully this didn't put me off snorkelling which i did for the whole morning. Watching the fish swimmming in the water around the reef was incredible!! it was even better to know what i was looking at and be able to name them. After lunch we moved onto a second site which was even better than the one before the colours were more vivid and there was a greater variety of fish. I spent all afternoon out that! it was amazing!!
That night we were taken out on the party bus!! It was really good fun and we played lots of games and got to see cairns from a an open top double decker bus!
Tuesday was a free day and choose to spend today skydiving!! i really can't put into words how amaxzing it was i think every1 will just need to watch the film and see the pictures!!
Today we went to cape tribulation which is where the great barrier reef meets the daintree rainforest. We went to several look out points and the views was awesome!! we also went for a swim in the sea which was incredibly warm!! After lunch we went croc spotting in the daintree rainforest! The biggest one we soppted was 4m! the biggest one ever seen in aus was 8.2m and a metre wide!! woooooooo
Anyways going to have to go, sorry to be brief but my money has run out on my inet card!!
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