Carole and Lindsay

So we arrived in Cairns on April 17th and we're leaving here on the 25th to start our long journey back to Canada. We've both had an amazing time on this trip and have seen many wonderful things but we're really looking forward to coming home and getting back into the swing of things. Cairns is a pretty neat place - it's not too big and it's not too small (population 140,000) and the weather is amazing. We've been spending a lot of time at the lagoon (a free outdoor salt water swimming pool) and soaking in all the sunshine we can get before we get home. We went to the small town of Kuranda which is just north of Cairns by a scenic train and then came back on a gondola. The town was pretty ... read more

We arrived in Townsville late afternoon on April 11th to a hostel that seemed to have their kitchen in the garage. It was a bit odd, and made for a lot more ants than we normally have to deal with. On the 12th (Easter Sunday) we went to a market in the morning and got some jewellery, then caught the ferry to Magnetic Island for the afternoon. It was a very nice island, with lots of rainforest and secluded bays. Apparently there were a lot of shipwrecks around the coast of the island too, but you could only see them on dives because they were underwater. We had lunch at the most popular beach, Horseshoe Bay, and then after a slight mishap with the bus we went on the Forts walk. It was quite steep, but ... read more

We were told conflicting stories about the name of this place/ these places. Some people told us it was the same town and it just had two names, and some told us they were separate towns. Who knows. Anyways, we were here from April 2-6, and we mostly just hung out at the hostel or the beach. On the 3rd when we went to the beach the water temperature was 27 degrees!! Celsius!! It was pretty much the same temperature as the air - we couldn't believe it. The most exciting thing we did was on our second last day when we went kayaking in the ocean. It was hard work, and we both got a bit roughed up. Carole has a massive fist-sized bruise in the middle of her back and I got hit in ... read more

We were in Noosa from March 24-29th and had a pretty relaxing time. We mostly just hung out at the beach or the hostel and read some books. Our stay there started out pretty rocky though but then it got much better. The day we arrived the hostel didn't have any beds for us because they thought we weren't coming until the next day but luckily for us they had "emergency beds" which were basically tiny little cots that they rolled out onto the floor of a 14 bed dorm. So we tried to sleep in there the first night but weren't very successful because everyone was partying and decided to have a yelling match when they got back in the middle of the night. I guess it worked out alright for us in the end ... read more

Hello everyone! From Byron Bay we came to Surfer's Paradise (March 14), but we're actually staying in Mermaid Beach which are both part of the Gold Coast. We're really enjoying staying in a room of our own in a resort with our own bathroom, kitchen, balcony and tv. There are also several pools but we tend to stick to the adults-only pool. So far this week we've done some shopping at an outlet mall, a lot of hanging around in our room or by the pool, and some walking around Surfer's Paradise. On Wednesday we went to Wet'n'Wild Water World and did some watersliding which was pretty fun. Most of the slides had tubes which cut down on the scrapes you get from going over the joins in the waterslide, although there was one slide where ... read more