Australia: Cairns - Brisbane

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Hey, so we're nearing the end of our time in Oz; off to Brisbane today for the last few days, but have been given free internet here so thought I would do the blog now because I'm cheap and skint. Sorry about that.

We had a wonderful time on the Great Barrier Reef a couple of weeks ago - Green Island was absolutely beautiful (as are everything 'Green' in my opinion) and we were able to snorkel with stunning fish/creatures...until I got a load of salt water in my eyes, had a little fit and had to get out briefly. You could wonder around the island, so we did some exploring, had a picnic where a very odd looking bird (small version of Kevin from 'Up'😉 decided to jump onto my lap and try to eat my peanut butter roll and laze around in the heavenly sunshine. Amazing.

Since then we've slowly been making our way down the East Coast towards Brisbane, staying in each place around two nights and we've noticed just how relaxed the Aussies appear to be - every town is like a small beach town where you can surf, chill and eat. One particular 'relaxing' afternoon I won't want to repeat though was after Ben suggested doing a rainforest walk he had heard about just outside of Mission Beach. Well we got dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a sign stating that a croc had recently been spotted here. Great start. We then had to make our way along the empty beach where the croc was to get to the walk, which was basically a gap in the bushes. The hideousness then truely began as we walked amongst the wildlife of Oz, with things rustling and flying past constantly and no real path to follow. Ben had just calmed me down however when he came to an abrupt halt and looked up. There in front of us was the biggest, most ugly-looking spider I have ever seen, just dangling on it's fat web gawping at us. There was no way out and we had to go under. I can safely say I was pretty hysterical at this point so fair play to Ben for putting up with me. We got out and made it to a bar for an ice cold drink to get over our ordeal. However it didn't end there. We then had to walk along the beach for '45 mins' back to our hostel, but the walk in the deadly heat was 1.5 hours including a spot where we had to wade our way through very dirty water with no one around...later finding out that we had actually walked through a crocs home. Good times.

Apart from that day (and another in 1770, where we stupidly decided to climb a fricking cliff), our trip has been fairly relaxed. We've done some kayaking, scenic walks (including a fantastic sand dune in Rainbow Beach) and plenty of free BBQs. Wildlife is also pretty big over here (as well as reruns of Keeping up Appearances and One Foot in the Grave on tv...weird!) and we have held snakes and lizards that were randomly brought into a hostel we were staying at, been to Koorana Croc Farm (tasted croc kebab - surprisingly yummy!) Underwater World and Australia Zoo, which was both of our faves. We even managed to time it for Steve Irwin Day, which was really lovely to see how much this country still loves him.

So onto Brissy and then Asia here we come! Fingers crossed that all the flooding clears up... xxxx

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