Australia - Up t' Cairns

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G' day,

We're up in Carins now, the last stop in oz before flying to New Zealand this Friday. So from where we left off, from 1770 we moved on up to a cattle ranch at Kroombit, a compulsory overnight stop with Oz Experience. It's like a proper outback working farm which has branched out into tourism to make a bit more money. We got to herd a few goats and ride a mechanical bull but the best bit was getting to use a shotgun on the clay pigeon range, i got 2 out of 5, not bad!

Then it was up to Airlie Beach from which we did the Whitsunday islands. It was a 3 day trip to the islands, which are on the Great Barrier Reef, where you stay on the boat for the 2 nights. It was fully catered with amazing food, the best i have eaten the whole trip, not bread, noodles or pasta for once! We did loads of snorkelling looking at all the fishes and the reef. Also did a scube dive which was a bit scary at first but once you get the whole breathing and equalising thing sorted then it was good fun, altho the visibilty was a bit poor which was annoying. Also went to Whitehaven beach, supposedly the 2nd best beach in the world, it was really nice but it was cloudly and rainy when we were there which made it a bit disappointing but hey.

Next stop was Townsville and onto Magnetic Island which has the most sun of anywhere in Australia, needless to say i liked this place. There is pretty much only one place to stay on there which meant there was loads of people there from our bus and our Fraser Island trip which made it a really good 3 days. Me and Sam hired a car (i say car it was more like a golf buggy) with Craig and Helen and went touring round the island one day which was good, did a walk upto the top of the mountain where they put in gun emplacements to fend off the japs in WWII, but didn't see any wild koalas unfortunately.

Final stop now up in Cairns and it is super hot, a cool 32 degrees today. Did white water rafting the other day which was awesome, and may do more day trips here, we'll see. Anyway next update will probably be from NZ, until then..

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