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Published: August 19th 2007
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"Touchdown in the land of the Kanga-roos", so goes Sibby's song, which means - we're here!! Australia, we have arrived. The second leg has officially started. You would think that we had done enough hard travelling in Asia, and to be honest I thought by arriving in Singapore I would have said goodbye to that for a while, but oooooooh no, not a hope matey. We were supposed to be flying with Quantas, direct to Cairns. But when we arrived in the airport we were told the not-so-happy news that we were flying with Jetstar (Aussie answer to Ryanair) VIA Darwin. Eugh. Our flight didn't take off until after 11pm cos some eejit decided to check in his bag, and then obviously forgot why he was in the airport. The seats were the smallest I've ever been squashed into (we already took a short flight with Jetstar and the plane was much bigger!), and our moaning increased tenfold when we found there was no tellies (you could rent little DVD players) and we thought we weren't getting any food. As a group, we value our food, especially when travelling. And, as sick as it is, we all LOVE plane food, and
get ridiculously excited everytime we're given some. The only logical explanation for this is that's is free (although the bread roll is always lovely and warm), so when there was no mention of FREE food, and we opened the "Snack menu" and remembered that we had no cash between us ("Minimum credit card change must be 75dollars"), it was like having Kevin and Perry on board. Things began to look up when we heard the tinkle of the drinks trolley heading our direction, and there seemed to be no money changing hands......after we were handed our FREE liquid refreshements Sib inquired as to the free food status, and low and behold, we were told we were getting a dinner! Well, you'd think we'd just been offered a free meal at the Ivy. Anyway, we flew four hours or so to Darwin, had to get off the plane for half an hour or more for security, then back on for another two hours to Cairns. So no sleep obviously. When we arrived we were dreading the thoughts of nasty customs men quizzing us about our visas, but we got some lovely lady who was more interested in our month in Vietnam than what we were going to do in Oz! Taxi, hostel, breakfast, bed, ahhhhhhhhhh.
So here we are in Cairns. It's lovely, we really like the place. We're staying in a hostel along the Esplanade, which is this massive lagoon with a gorgeous public swimming pool and a really long promenade. It's lined with cafes and restaurants (which we can't afford. Although we did treat ourselves to a delicious pizza on the first night), and loads of tour operators. When the sun is shining people just lounge on the grass or chill out in the pool, and there's always lots of people running, jogging and cycling along the promenade. The city itself is tiny for a city, and there seems to be more travellers than locals. Despite the amount of people passing through the majority of the people here are incredibly friendly. There was this one old guy in one of the tour companies who was like Alf Stewart on a very very bad day, who had more than a bit of a rant in our direction for no apparent reason, but apart from that we're received a very warm welcome....we have however been moaning about the price of EVERYTHING since we arrived. All of the tours are really feckin expensive, and obviously eating anything other than soup or cereal for the next seven months is going to be completely out of the question. Oh, Asia.
We didn't do much for our first few days, although obviously we have been sampling the local nightlife (it'd be rude not too). But today we.......dived the Great Barrier Reef!!!! I'd love to say I loved it, but to be honest it was a bit disappointing! We were brought out to the reef on a huge boat, and we opted to have a guided dive rather than go down ourselves (we may be certified, but we still wouldn't have a clue where we were going!). The boat and all the equipment was all really top notch (and lunch was unbelievable), but the organisation of the dives was a bit haphazard - our first guide was useless, but the second bloke was a bit better. Aside from all that, what was really disappointing was the lack of fish - not half as many as Koh Tao! HOWEVER we did see A SHARK!!!! Now, I'm not talking jaws here, he was just a reef shark, about a metre and a half long, but a shark all the same. And as you can see I met nemo! The coral was fantastic, but I suppose what I look for and get excited about are all the fishies. But obviously I'm really glad we went, it's a must-do, but I think we will be very fussy about where we do our next dive, cos it's big bucks from here on in (the dive today cost us 200 dollars; our four day course in Thailand, with four dives was about 220 euro).
So what's the plan from here????? Well luckily we finally got a travel guide! A second hand Rough Guide, which I'm not all that happy about, I'm a Lonely Planet woman. But the planning hasn't really got all that far - there's just too much to see, it's hard to know where to go from here. We want to spend the next three or four weeks travelling down the coast to Sydney, but I think we're going to head north into the rainforest for a few days first. I am hoping to forget the "rainforest=giant spiders" element for the time that I'm there! So first step first, we gotta rent a car. Now that should be interesting....
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Sinead
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Heya babe, Have been reading your blog since you left - good work keeping us all up to date with the latest antics! Sounds like you're having an absolute ball, I'm every bit the green eyed monster! Am making notes on places to avoid when I eventually get around to doing my year away... only messing, it all sounds fab. I'm sure you'll have an absolute ball in Oz, have a V.B. or two for me! Sin xxx