We left Asia behind us after 7 months of travel, cheap food, accommodation and a rich and friendly culture. Australia was to be the first western country on our travels and we were looking forward to a variety of comforts including goods in shops having prices on them and generally enjoying a reprieve from being ripped off by local taxi drivers. Cairns was our first port of call as our flight veered in off the northern coast via Darwin, circumnavigating a vast nothingness into the sun as it rose shining towards us a brilliant reddish-orange. Australia is vast, mind-bogglingly vast. A country the size of North America, but with only 21 million inhabitants - a majority of those crammed along the Eastern seaboard. It is a place that is fiercely patriotic, yet the Queen adorns the
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