We were up early to drive ourselves down to the Australia Zoo for 9am. In case you didn't know The Australia Zoo is Steve Irwin's zoo, he and his family own and operate it. It started out as a small reptile farm owned by his parents. It's now a massive zoo with all kinds of Australian animals and a few other animals from around the world. Since Steve died in 2006 his family has turned the zoo into a bit of a memorial to him. As you enter there are a few keepers with some animals that you can touch and get pictures with. There was a cockatoo, a snake and even a dingo out for a walk. Mom and I touched the snake and met the cockatoo. At the entrance is a bronze statue of ... read more

Rain appears to be following us on this trip and is determined to rain on us everyday. But we wont let it get us down!!!A courtesy bus came to pick us up nice and early in the morning. After picking up all the passengers we headed for the ferry terminal. It's kind of like a barge. We sat upstairs in the seating area where a big fluffy orange cat seemed to call home. He would let you pet him but he did not seem at all interested in any of the people on board. Once on Fraser island we hopped onto our 4x4 bus and headed out. The whole island is sand and rainforest. It's unique because it's a rainforest living in sand. One of the purest breed of Dingo's call this island home. Dingo's look ... read more

We were up and on the road really early this morning as we had a lot of km's to make. But we weren't far out of town when mom and dad started to wonder about the whereabouts of their camera. We pulled over on the side of the road and searched the car, going through all the bags, retracing our footsteps, everything. No sign of it. Last they remember having it is while we were waiting for our taxi from the harbour the afternoon we got back from the boat. So, back into Airlie beach we go stopping at the hotel and mom and dad searched the entire room, no camera. Next, we rushed back to the harbour and dad ran down to see if the hammer was still there. Mom and I asked at the ... read more

We were up early and all packed and the hotel let us leave our stuff in their storage. We ordered a taxi to take us down to the harbour as we didn't want to leave our car down their for 2 days. We met several others waiting for the same boat while we waited. There was mostly young backpackers. One young backpacker had her aunt with her so mom and dad weren't the only older people. However, all the backpackers were either from Germany or Switzerland or Austria and all spoke some form of German. We got all checked in with the guy from the boat and were given our stinger suit for snorkeling. Then we proceeded down to the boat. The boat is designed to sleep 23 people but I think it would be very ... read more

Well raining again, nothing new here. We left Port Douglas a little disappointed with the lack of sun but never the less had a great time and saw all the things we wanted to. We didn't have too much of a plan but to just as far south as we could. Much of the area we were about to drive through had been affected by cyclone Yasi. We saw first hand the destruction it caused of houses, farms, crops, even some beaches. Banana plantation crops were broken in half, no wonder the cost of Banana's is $11/kilo here right now. Yikes. Many of these farms will have to start completely over. The further south we got the more water in the fields we started to notice. It was also slowly creeping closer to being on the ... read more