Coming to an end

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Hey

This could be our last big blog entry which is a bit emotional but we're trying not to dwell on that so heres what we've been up to...

Cairns was unbelievably hot and humid (I would definitely put it in the top 5 hot places I've been) which unfortunately doesn't make it a perfect place to be spending nights in a boiling hot green house with no windows open (otherwise known as our new campervan). So after an extremely sweaty night (nice!) with no sleep we quickly drove back to the motel where we had stayed our first night and booked ourselves back into an airconditioned room. Apart from the heat though Cairns was beautiful. On our first day we drove about 10 minutes out of town to the edge of the rain forest and then took a cable car through and over it to a small sweaty market village surrounded by nothing but seriously huge trees. Our second day was slightly more refreshing as we took a boat to the outer edge of the great barrier reef and went snorklelling. Needless to say the reef was amazing with so many schools of flourescent fish to swim through (including some Nemos) and loads of really colourful coral. We had a brilliant day topped off by a few drinks in the sun afterwards, several swims in the town's lagoon and a bbq in the park (what a great australian feature these are, free bbqs in parks where you just press the button and get cooking meat in the midde of park!)

With time running out and 1800km to cover to get to Brisbane we dragged ourselves into action and got driving. Our first stop was at Airlee Beach where we spent another tough day snorkelling and getting our second look at the reef and also seeing the Whitsunday Islands including the beautiful Whitehave beach which is the most pure white beach that I have ever been on. The only problem with all these places is the pesky "stingers" (deadly jellyfish) which means that at this time of year you have to wear some rather sexy all-in-one lycra suits before getting into the sea. Oh and "schoolies" - Airlee Beach was full of hundreds of school leavers getting drunk after finishing their A-levels - they almost made us spend a night in the dreaded sauna (our van) until we found a bed in a B&B in the nick of time.

After a couple of nights at Airlee beach and an early morning swim in the lagoon there we left the schoolies to it and headed further down the coast towards Fraser Island. On route we wandered into a small town's tourist office at a random lunch stop where we found out about a nearby turtle beach so not having any other particular plans we ended up spending the night at a turtle sanctuary at a place called Mon Repos where we spent the evening watching huge turtles drag themselves up the beach, dig holes and lay their eggs. Anyway, onto Fraser Island which is a smallish pure sand Island just off the coast and is home to the worlds only (at least I think thats what our guide said) sandbased virgin rainforest. After a day of rain whilst driving there (the first for a while actualy) we went on a fantastic two day tour driving (or actually more like bouncing) over sand tracks in our off road bus/truck thing and visiting beautiful beaches, sand dunes, a cool looking ship wreck and loads of natural lakes and streams which are fantastic to swim in (the sea there is again annoyingly off limits for swimming due to all the sharks - blimin Australia and its deadly animals!)

Our final stop before Brisbane was Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's place) and home to the world famous Crocoseum - crikey! The crocoseum is a crocodile show with bird display thown in which was quite fun and in true tourist style we held a Koala, fed the kangaroos and to fed Amy's love hate relationship with snakes by staring at all the various species that could have killed us over the last month. From the zoo we drove the final leg to Brisbane for a final day relaxing in the aussie sun, watching the most amazing electric lightning storm I've ever seen and getting our first proper full on burst of Christmas music in the shops. And so that was Australia...done! Well not at all actually as Australia is truly massive and we really only stuck to the East Coast so theres so much (and a lot of nothing I think) that we'll have to see next time.

I'm starving now so to stick true to our always behind blogging style, Hong Kong can wait for now (and photos will be up next time hopefully as this computer is not having any of it)

See you all scarily soon!!

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