It's raining, it's pouring... :-(

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Here we are in Oz, having survived the overnight flight. We got picked up and taken to Calypso hostel, which was quite a cool place with a pool and a good all you can eat buffet for 8 dollars every evening..themed ofcourse! We briefly contained our tiredness in the swimming pool until si crashed out about midday.. he would not get up for another 28 hours! crazy! will and i survived until 5pm with a trip into cairns centre where i admired a fetching baby-blue billabong beanie...in will's words "very gangsta"! We too then crashed and awoke 22 hours later, with new roommates! 2 guys from switzerland and one from litchenstein..really nice guys, had just learnt englidh in sydney for a few months.. the next evening we went out with them and explored cairns' coyote night in PJ's...was entertaining although some bloke just ended up getting his arse out in order to win the competition which has slightly scarred me...

In the next few days we got used to cooking for ourselves and explored Cairns fairly thoroughly, I bought the hat by the way! Nights out were also fun, we met some great Aussie guys called Hamo and Ryan from Townsville...they offered us a place to stay down there but unfortunately we were only heading to Magnetic island just off Townsville. We didnt know this at the time and were sure we'd meet up again, so the Hamo guy gave Will his 'magic' wallet (later learnt it works using magnets..i think?!) until we met again...poor guy! Will's happy though! Woolshed and Rhinobar were also visited as good watering holes, especially good as Christian, one of the Swiss guys, seemed to like getting the drinks in!

We were also deciding on what tours to do, if any, and after some serious persuasion by a receptionist called Buddha, and also after lengthy financial discussios with the parents, i agreed to do a 3 day 2 night liveaboard dive course on the reef, in order to get my advanced diver award and obviously see a shed load of cool stuff.. didnt really think about the crappy visibility due to the endless rain in Cairns at the time.. ERROR!!!!!!!! the trip was ok, but not really worth the money and it was the first time i'd felt disappointed by something i had spent my money on... Still we got to do a night dive which was really good despite the fact my torch didnt really work..saw a turtle asleep! The dives for the award involved going down to 30+ metres to experience the feeeling of nitrogen narcosis which is where you feel really giddy and lightheaded..made us write our names backwards but wasnt really a problem.. Also did some photography although pretty crappy in the murky water, and did some navigation which couldnt have been worse really, as the next dive we ended up not finding the reef and just swam along the sand for 20 mins, next dive we ended up seeing nice reef but finished maybe 50m from the boat...so lame! Food on board was ok, some staff were really friendly and a good laugh, but it was way too hectic - shown by the get up at 5.30am and we'd done 2 dives by 8.30am - mental! Also on the way out there the sea was very rough, and si had some serious sea-sickness..not cool..people were throwing upo everywhere which in itself made me feel pretty queasy!

Anyway soon enough it was time for us to get on the OZ bus and head down through mission beach to Magnetic island. The bus arrived in the pouring rain, slightly harder than usual at this point, and we met a sedat group of people travelling down over the Atherton tablelands to Mission Beach - not really the party bus atmosphere we were told about but we were tired enough at 8am to be happy enough about this.. So off to mission beach where we stayed one night, (i had finally managed to send birthday cards in a town called mareeba as everywhere until this day had been shut due to easter!), enjoying an awesome swimming pool with a balancing beam across it for fighting with inflatables, and also a volleyball net... very fun and a lot of time in there.. next morning onto the bus to head down to magnetic island (raining again by the way) where we stopped in townsville for lunch and then caught the ferry. stayed in base backpackers, expensive and crappy rooms, but hey, got to do some rubbish sea-kayaking as part of our oz-pass which i guess would have been nice if we werent surrounded by dark grey clouds! also played some shuttlecock football game we bought in cambodia, then watched some guys dressing up as girls contest in the bar before bed.. next day it was back onto the bus for a quick bush walk, where we saw some koalas and a black widow spider, followed by the trip down to airlie beach...

and thats where i shall leave it, in airlie now waiting for our boat, very bored, but nevermind.. happy birthday als!, hope you are all well, miss you all loads and loads, take it easy, chris xxx

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