Gday mates! We arrived in cairns very early in the morning on the 27th October. After a short nap at our hostel we decided to go for a little walk around and explore our new city. It was scorching hot. South East Asia was hot but this is blistering heat...now you know why they all wear factor 50!! Anyway cairns is quite a strange city, we felt this was probably because we had arrived back into a 1st world, westernized country from South east asia but also because there just didnt seem to be any people around. Cairns is quite a big city but it is just so quiet. I suppose we just didnt expect there to be so few people around. For a country so big there is only a population of about 20 million so it makes sense, just takes a whiile to get used to wandering around what feels like an evacuated city! The next thing that really shocked us was the prices...Oz is expensive! Its more expensive than home! As you can imagine this was a big shock since we only spent aboput 15 pounds a day between us in southeast asia...and that was to eat, sleep and drink!

So after a wander round, which felt like we were wandering around an evacuated city!The orginal plan was to spend about 4 days in Cairns, do a few activities and then start making our way down the east coast. unfortunately i got ill and so everything was pushed back. Eventually, after about 3 days of just sitting around doing nothing in Cairns, we went off on our first trip which was to the Tablelands. Its an area of rainforest a few hours inland from cairns. There was a group of about 7 of us and we were taken by our hilarious guide Hutch to various places around the bush. He was a great guide and funny until he mentioned doing kareoke on the bus one by one to kill time! I was cacking myself for ages until i realised he was joking. I still have to learn that Aussies are big jokers! We stopped off at various locations and were talked through all the various plants that had lethal stings, and all the snakes that could kill you! It seems most of Australia's wildlife can kill! we did see the very rare tree kangaroo...yep a kagaroo that lives in a tree! very strange but amazing to see.

After a few hours of wandering around the bush, (thats what Aussies call every area outside a city...we werent in the outback yet!!) Hutch took us to see some beautiful waterfalls. he even took us to the waterfall where the famous Timotei advert was filmed and wait for it....where Peter Andre filmed his masterpiece of a music video 'Mysterious Girl'!

Tom and I had booked in for the overnight trip, most of our group were on the day tri and so said goodbye to them before settling down to our bbq dinner...mmmm! Our first Aussie barby! It was lovely. We spent the evening with a swedish couple from our trip who were lovely...eventhough i kep[t making references to clogs and windmills thinking they were from the Netherlands...highly embarrassing...for Tom...i was oblivious!

The next day we headed off on a 12KM guided bike tour of the area...i nearly died! it was beautiful riding around the rainfoerest when it was flat or downhill but upwards was a killer in 30 degree heat! b Afetr some lunch we got in some canoes and did a few hours paddling about where we saw water snakes, lizards and some pretty birds. We stopped off along the river to be shown some rocks that when wet and rubbed produced a paint like substance that the Aboriginies used as face paints. We then all preceeded to paint ourselves with ridiculous patterns! Tom and i had a lot of trouble steering the canoe, we were almost going around in circles! needless to say it caused a few arguments but once we were on dry land all was forgotten...but let me just say...Tom can't steer a canoe!