Queensland

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And so to Queensland, the last stop on our Australian tour. We flew into Cairns and then up to Port Douglas. It is a little town up in the North of Queensland, pretty close to the Great Barrier Reef. Ciaran got a wee scuba dive in and got out on the reef which was amazing. Pretty much every fish out of "Finding Nemo" was swimming about and there was a good auld shark having a sleep on the sea bed. The diving guys got particularly excited when a couple of "Devil Rays" swam past too. Meanwhile Deirdre got her head showered and didn't have to listen to all the rubbish he was spinning about diving gear and underwater cameras. Whilst in Port Douglas we stayed in an “Eco-Resort,” which consisted of a load of cabins in its own rainforest. It was a great spot and there was a man who parked your car for you and another guy who took you round the forest showing you all the birds and animals that the have rooting about the hotel. Port Douglas is also pretty close to the Daintree Rainforest. The Daintree is a “World Heritage Area” with crocodiles and cool trees like the Strangler Fig, a tree that starts life using a big tree for support, and as it grows it envelopes the tree and it dies leaving a huge hollow fig tree, hence the name – Strangler.





Next another massive drive down to the Whitsunday Islands. On the way, stopped off at the Big Mango for a picture and then got on the ferry to Daydream Island. The Whitsundays are a group of islands in the barrier reef that have amazing beaches and fishes. Whitehaven beach is one of the top 10 beaches in the world as voted by some holiday group, so we went there for a few hours. We didn’t have much time, so we had to do a few mammoth drives and stopped off in a nice wee town called Yeppoon for a night, then Herveys bay and eventually got to Noosa where we met up with Auntie Patricia. She had looked after us in Sydney and now got the privilege of looking after us in Noosa too! We went out for a great wee dinner and Ciaran got to have his last swim in Australia while Deirdre and Auntie Patricia hit the shops. Flew out of Brisbane to New Zealand for our next adventure…

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