Hello Everyone,

Hope you're all well and looking after yourselves.

So to update:
Arrival to Australia turned out to be a bit of nightmare. Rather than flying direct from Singapore we had to stop 3 hours in Darwin in the middle of the night. So we only had max. 2 hours sleep this night.
First stop: Cairns. Really nice, peaceful 'city' (though we'd say it was more like a town). Our hostel was really handy being close to the waterfront, and just a few minutes from town where they have an amazing outdoor swimming pool right in front of the beach. Pool was pristine and there were plenty of places to sunbathe and relax, even outdoor bbq's and their own man-made beach.
Here we booked a day's boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef where we got to snorkel in two amazing spots for at least 3 hours. We hired an underwater camera and Steve got carried away and took over 3hundred photos which are amazing, we'll be adding them soon. We also found Nemo! This was a great day and we got a fantastic lunch out on the ocean.

Next day we took advantage of our free tour with the Oz experience and went to visit the Atherton Tablelands, which is basically the rolling countryside above Cairns. We visited some beautiful waterfalls, one with a rock water-slide, and saw a massive volcanic lake where all the families were out for swimming. We got to see the infamous waterfall where Peter Andre filmed some of Mysterious Girl, as well as ancient tree where it's roots had strangled three trees and grew around them.

Had a great time in Cairns, but had to move on if we were to get to Sydney in time for our flight so our next stop was Mission Beach. On route, our driver stopped at a Crocodile Farm, where the staff tempted the crocs out of their pools with massive bits of bacon (wild pig) so we could all take photos of them jumping up. Here also got to feed and stroke the wallabies and saw dingos and cassowaries. Trip here was topped off by having photos with a massive python draped around our necks.

Mission Beach was a very quiet place, mainly a stop over if you wanted to Skydive or Raft on the river. Unfortunately, we did neither and so we took a couple of days to relax here and save some money before heading on.

Next, we stopped at Magnetic Island, a small island off the coast, which was very quiet and relaxing. Our first night, we discovered the bay where were staying didnt even have a local shop so we had to get a burger from the pub until we could get to a supermarket in morning. Once again, not much to do here, but we managed to find a few good walks and made our way up to a great view point over looking the whole island and then stumbled upon an 'unofficial' nudist beach hidden away between the rocks. Our last night, we had a great night with some canadian girls we'd already met in Cairns and a group of lads on a stag do from Victoria.

Thats it for this update. we could go on but there's so much more to write and so little time. We will let you know what happened in the rest of Oz in the next few days.

Love to all,

Katie and Steve xxxxx