Dive dive dive

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I can't believe it - it's raining! We're in Cairns, as far north as we are planning to go, and we've stepped out into a small tropical shower. Fingers crossed it'll be better for our dive tomorrow. We've been on Magnetic Island, about 350km south of here for a few days, and although the sun has shone and we're now looking pretty brown, it was pretty windy so we couldn't dive there. Real shame as we'd been told to dive a great wreck about 100m long that went down in 1911 a couple of hours off the coast. It's called the Yongala and is now a mini reef/ecosystem in it's own right. Still, we had a good few days on the island, kayaking, sunbathing, walking etc. generally enjoying the last few days before Rachel has to go home. But to backtrack a bit, from Bryon Bay about 10 days ago we headed north again, straight past Brisbane, to the Australia Zoo. I was more than a little sceptical about this place, especially as it was the brainchild of Steve Irwin, but it was actually great and certainly a better zoo than the last one we went to in China! There was loads of space for the animals and it was great to see all the Aussie favourites - koala, kangaroo etc. - as well as tigers, elephants and crocs. We stayed in Noosa, which looked very cool but the weather wasn't up to much so we left the next day and did the one really long drive we knew we'd have to tackle at some point. We stayed a night at a very odd place called Agnes Water but arrived in Airlie Beach the next day. In total we have now driven over 3,300km in Australia and almost 8,000km including New Zealand, not too shabby. Airlie Beach is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, so we immediatley went to a tour compnay and got onto a trip arriving an hour later! We opted for a slightly lux trip - 25 of us on a huge tall sailing ship in cabins, chef on board... I've enjoyed a lot of things on this trip and used a fair number of superlatives, but the Whitsundays were the most amazing! The first full day on board we sailed to the outer reef and did two dives. The coral and fish life was out of this world! Just as you'd be staring at a clown fish, a shark (only reef shark don't worry) would come into view, and then a ray would flap past! After the dives we sailed and moored just off Whithaven Beach, which we explored a bit the next day. The sand is the best you've ever seen - white and the consistency of flour! The people on board were pretty cool (few Brits, too many French), the food was very good and plentiful and the scenery was fantastic. Going to be hard to top that on the honeymoon next year! After the Whitsundays we went to Magnetic Island as I've mentioned already and now it's a few days and some diving on the reef tomorrow (and I've hired a camera) before Rachel flies homes and I go off to Perth. It's going to be a huge wrench to see Rachel go home, but I'm looking forward to a bit of kitesurfing out west and a few more weeks of sun before it's back to earth with a bump.

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