Cairns & Mission Beach Skydive, Australia, February 2014

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We had to get up really early at 6am the next morning for our bus to Cairns. A quick look out the window showed us that it was chucking it down outside, not ideal when we had a 15 minute walk to the bus station. I didn't feel too bad as I hadn't drank loads the night before but Freeman was rotten as he had stayed out later than me until 4am. We packed, went to hand our keys in at reception to get our $20 deposits back but reception was closed so I posted my room key and had to miss out on my $20, wounded! Luckily it just stopped raining as we left the hostel so the walk to the bus wasn't too bad. We saw Penny and Charlotte at the bus station and when we got on the bus it was fairly empty so we dominated the back and took 2 seats each. We all chatted for a while but Charlotte was hanging so she went to sleep and then James and Penny had a deep conversation so I just wrote my diary and napped myself. At one of the toilet breaks there were a load of funny signs and my favourite was 'I do not have a drinking problem, I drink, I get drunk, I fall down, no problem', sums me up quite well! After about 5 hours the girls got off the bus as they were going somewhere else. Me and Freeman managed to keep 2 seats each when other people got on which made the journey more comfortable but without any headphones it was another long, boring 6 hour journey to Cairns. We arrived in Cairns about 6pm and took the short 10 minute walk to our hostel, Gilligans, which was huge and looked class from the outside. It was a fairly new, big, lively hostel with a large swimming pool and it's own bar/club. We checked into our rooms and chilled on the wifi which was fast and cheap at just $2/24hr. I asked Freeman if he wanted to go get food but he just went to sleep instead so I went to the kitchen and cooked a beef stew I had in my bag. I then got in bed but some lads in our dorm decided to invite some American girls in for drinks which we didn't mind at first but expected them to leave by 11pm as normal. However, they stayed on our balcony really late making loads of noise and the girls were classic drunk American females being really loud and over the top, then started banging on the balcony sliding glass door so I had to be a killjoy and went to tell them to be quiet because we were trying to sleep. I finally got to sleep after 1am.

We had to be up at 6am to get the 6:30am bus to Mission Beach as this was the day we were finally going to do our SKYDIVE!!! I didn't have any breakfast as it was too early so on the bus I was knackered but still excited. It was a 2 hour drive to our sky diving spot, Mission Beach, so I just slept most of the way. When we arrived it was really cloudy and looked like it was going to rain so all sky dives were postponed. I was absolutely gutted because this was our last chance to do the sky dive before we left Australia. We sat around for ages and then walked to the shop to get some breakfast. We sat in a café with the Irish girls for a while then headed back to base to see if anyone could sky dive. We ended up watching 40 Year Old Virgin and were told they had cancelled the bus behind us, it wasn't looking good. Me and Freeman then played football for a bit in the garden and it rained a little bit but then finally cleared up and the first group left to jump. Me, Freeman and Orla were all in group 5 so we had to wait around for ages before we could go so I was in a terrible mood. As we went to sign in I hadn't brought all of the tickets that we needed but luckily Freeman had his phone so he e-mailed the tickets over and we were good to go. The first group put their DVD's on and it looked amazing so it changed my mood and then we went down to the beach to watch another group land. Then it was finally our turn to go. I was a little bit nervous but also relaxed when I met my partner Sanna, got kitted up and had a quick interview with his GoPro as I had paid for the video. It was a short 20 minute drive to the airstrip and when we got on the plane I was buzzing! The plane wobbled a lot on the way up as it was so small but we got incredible views of the land, coastline, sea and islands. I felt more and more excited until the first person jumped and I saw how quickly they disappeared and that made me a bit nervous. We shuffled to the edge, sat there hanging out of the plane, 14,000ft above the ocean and it felt crazy. Finally I was pushed out and we went upside down for a few seconds before Sanna stabilised us but we were free falling so fast that I could barely breathe. That first part of the free fall is hard to put into words. The amount of emotions I was feeling was a mixture of being scared, excited, overwhelmed, confused almost, as you have no control of the fall. It was an unbelievable rush of adrenaline and my glasses came up on my left eye making it stream with water but I didn't dare move my arms to try and pull it back down in case it sent us into a spin. The free fall lasted 60 seconds which at the speed we were going was incredible. Sanna span us around in circles giving me amazing 360 degree views of the different scenery from the beach to the island out at sea. Sanna then pulled the main parachute and luckily it didn't hurt my groin or crown jewels as it had with some people (I was very careful with their position when I put the harness on). My partner then loosened the straps to make it more comfortable but at first it felt like I was just going to drop from him, but he assured me I wouldn't. It was much comfier once he had done this and gave me a better opportunity to really appreciate what I had just done and let it sink in. As we came down through the little clouds the sun above them cause a circular rainbow in the cloud which was beautiful, I have never seen a rainbow like that before. Sanna then let me control the descent going left and right and then he took over for the landing. We came into the beach pretty fast and I lifted my legs up, he then slowed us right down, landed on his feet and then I managed to land too; a couple of steps forward and we had landed perfectly. I went to give him a high 5 but he was undoing the straps so he mugged me off for ages, it looked so funny on the video but he finally saw and high fived me. Freeman then landed next to me so I ran over and hugged him. We then headed back to base, took our equipment off and waited for our DVD's and also had to wait for the last couple of groups to jump. The additional wait after and the 2 hour bus home was annoying and a slight anti-climax because we just wanted to go straight out drinking to celebrate. On the way back I managed to borrow some headphones and listened to my music whilst Harry and Freeman chatted away at the back. We got back to the hostel about 7:30pm so we grabbed some food, had a shower, got ready and went out with Harry to go and get some goon. We pre drank in the dorm and then headed down to the bar about 10pm. It was fairly quiet but we spotted Natalie with some other girls so we joined them on their table outside. Freeman went off around the corner on his phone for ages as he wanted to use up his last bit of credit, so I just drank with the girls. Later in the night they had a Gladiator style fight on some inflatables. Different pairs went up there to battle with the Gladiator sticks in the middle of the club, with the aim to knock the other one off their podium which was a good laugh. Me and Harry then just danced away with all the girls and didn't get to bed in the early hours, not ideal with another early start the next day to Scuba Dive at the Great Barrier Reef...

I didn't wake up until 10am the next day and straight away I realised we had slept through our 7am alarm and therefore missed our scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef, absolutely gutted! That would have been my first scuba dive and there is probably no better location on Earth to do it. We didn't do anything that morning as we were so hungover but around midday me, Freeman and Harry went to a shopping centre across the road for a Subway. We then had a walk around Cairns and I bumped into Georgia, a girl I had met back in Thailand at the start of 2013! After a quick chat we agreed to meet in the bar that night for a drink. Just as we had left Georgia and her mates I bumped into Natalie Stephens, a girl I know from back home and the person that sorted out our whole East Coast trip from Sydney to Cairns. She walked down to the lagoon with us as her travel agents was down that way so we had a good chat and I told her what had been good and what had been not so good about the tour she had sorted for us. Again, the lagoon was amazing as they all are in Australia, it'd be so good to have places like this in England but then again we don't have the weather for it! We then headed back to the hostel and Tall Harry arrived so me and him chilled in the pool for an hour. I then went up to the room, showered and got ready. Me and Freeman then decided to go to Nandos and a girl in our room called Laura joined us after I'd been giving her loads of advice on what to do down the East Coast as she was working down from Cairns to Melbourne and we had already done it. After a little bit of confusion we found the Nandos, ordered and sat down. As Laura ordered she shouted me over, pointed at the lad on the table next to me and said 'I'm sure he is from Geordie Shore'. I looked and he definitely wasn't, but I then looked at the girl he was with and I couldn't believe my eyes, it was the legend that is Charlotte from Geordie Shore, one of my favourite programmes!!! i'd gone and sat right behind her and didn't even notice so my thanks go to Laura for spotting it as it made my day. We sat back down and as soon as the lad left the table I turned around, said hello, told her how much of a legend she was and asked for a photo and she said yes even though she had no makeup on and wasn't dressed up, proving that she isn't like most of these other celebrities that are too far up their own a**e. I asked what she was doing and it turns out she was doing PR work for herself getting her name known more all over Australia, but said it had been none stop and she was constantly on buses, staying in places for short times and she was just knackered and wanted to be home. I told her I could understand as I was backpacking and that's exactly what we had been doing with regards to journeys (albeit having much more fun) but she seemed genuinely interested and said she hoped I enjoy the rest of my trip, top girl. The Nandos itself was nice but again didn't compare to the ones back home. On the way back to the hostel hundreds of bats flew over the city which was very strange but interesting, I have no idea what they were doing there. At the hostel me and Freeman decided we couldn't go out that night because we had a transfer to the airport at 3:30am. As we were bored we went up to the Irish girls room to chill with them for a bit and they told us that we massively missed out on the scuba diving trip because they did the one we should have done and said it was amazing! One of the girls fell to sleep so we played Buckaroo with her and it was hilarious, me and Freeman managed to get about loads of blankets, towels, neck rolls, sunglasses etc on her whilst she was still asleep, it was hilarious. This was made even funnier when she woke up 20 minutes later shouting OMG no wonder i'm sweatin so much (in her Irish accent which obviously makes everything funnier). We then went back to our room to go to bed but I got so bored that I ended up going down to the bar with Harry, Georgia and her mate for a few drinks which inevitably ended up getting out of hand. Me and Harry went in rounds which always makes you drink faster so we both ended up getting smashed. We were dancing with all the girls and then there was some sort of dirty dancing competition on the stage so we all headed inside to watch that. One of the girls got completely naked apart from a tiny little revealing thong and she was fit with a great body so all the lads were loving it, although the mixed race girl with the better dance moves got the crowds vote and won! I had videos on my phone of me steaming in the early hours with Harry pointing the camera at me saying 'got to be up in an hour for my flight, bothered!', such a daft lad. I had another amazing night and the bar closed about 3am so we all chatted outside for a little bit and then at 3:25 I headed up to the room to grab my bags and leave. Freeman was fast asleep so I had to quickly wake him up and we headed down to reception for our airport transfer just in time. I sat at the bag of the mini bus eating chocolate because I was drunk and it wasn't too far to the airport. We first had a 2hr flight to Brisbane, a 3hr stopover at that airport and then a further 7:20hr flight to Singapore. As I hadn't actually slept that night I spent most of the flights fast asleep.

And so we came to the end of our Australian adventure which had been absolutely incredible. Byron Bay was the highlight for me and I had also done my first sky dive, landing on a beach so I will never be able to top that! Australia is such a good country and I can definitely see myself coming back here in the future, I want to move out there to work within the next couple of years, let's see if that materialises...

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