Damn beer is expensive!

Howdy

Australia has rubbish cell signal! and the Internet is expensive here. In fact the whole darn country is expensive with the pound being so weak against the aussie dollar! Oh well I'll just have to work for longer in New Zealand.

I'm again a bit far behind on the updates so I am going to try and keep this one short.

Cairns was pretty cool, I had a really good time there met some cool people ended up going out for the evening and having an awesome time, which I did regret the next day! Tom, Nicole and I also ended up renting a van for the next two weeks to get ourselves to Brisbane! Its pretty cool, it has two double beds, a fridge, cooker, microwave, sink, the works!

Any how we headed north towards Cape Tribulation, the tropical rainforests of Australia and boy is it cool. The views are absolutely amazing the rainforest reaches the sea, I mean it hits the beach! The first night we just thought this looks nice lets pull over and camp for the night. We ended up having, well I did, a few beers by a large campfire on the beach. Idyllic. The next day we just continued north on the coastal road stopping off here and there to look at the view before we made it into Cape Tribulation.

After a couple of days hanging around in Cape Trib we headed back down south towards Cairns again so that I could do some diving on the reef. I ended up having to book with a larger remit which I was not too happy about as I would rather have gone on a smaller boat with fewer people, however expense and time dictated otherwise. For my first dive I decided to take guided as I was a little unsure and boy what a mistake. For one the Dive leader was rubbish, the dive sight was rubbish (it was used as a try dive site so all of the coral was damaged), there were six people in my group which meant that we had to keep coming up to 'drop people off'. The dive leader kept signalling for me not to go too deep, we were at 15m. Not impressed. Needles to say I decided to take the second dive unguided and had a whale of a time. The coral wall was amazing, the fish were amazing, the 'coral canyons' were amazing... you get the idea!

After my day on the reef Tom drove us to The Boulders at Babina. We arrived here quite late, by which time it was dark. Luckily the camp-site was free! We ended up parking next to a northern bloke who looked like he was from the Royale Family! and boy could he talk for Britain! He did give us a load of really useful information as he had spent the last 6 months in a van touring the whole of Oz. We found out that there are loads of places where you can camp for free or didly squat. The Boulders themselves were a collection of huge rocks that filled a gorge creating some brilliantly clear swim pools. We didn't spend too long here as we heard that just down the road was Josephine falls which had some even better water falls and holes to go swimming in. There was a huge natural rock slide that you could hurtle down into another large swimming hole.

After a morning messing around in the watering holes we headed south for Mission Beach only once we arrived it decided to rain. The forecast was for rain for the next two days so we only ended up staying the one night before heading south again this time for Mt Fox and Wallaman Falls (the tallest in the southern Hemisphere!). We never did make it to the top of Mt Fox as we couldn't actually find the start of the path! Bit of a shame. The drive up was absolutely amazing though, basically a single track stuck to the side of a very steep mountain! Instead we headed back towards Wallaman Falls. WOW. 268m single drop meaning that the water turns to mist before it hits the bottom. As it was quite late by the time we got there we had to camp for the night before we made the trek down there. It was a 2km dirt track switch backing down the side of the cliff. Just think of a 300m deep gourge surrounding you by 270 degrees with a hugh waterfall at one end, superb!

We decided it would be a good idea to head south towards Bowen beacuse we thought it had some prety good beaches. The drive took us the rest of the day and as we decided to stop off in Townsville we didnt get there till after dark. Lets just say that both were not that impressive. Townsville was a dump. Bowen, now thats another story. We foolishly though that souther Queensland would be like the North, i.e. you could pull over anywhere and camp. NO! We parked up on the esplanade and ended up getting moved on by the old bill or a $300 fine! As Tom and I had already had a couple of beers Nicole had to drive us to some dirt track 20Ks outta town for an absolutely freezing nights sleep!

Next port of call was the Whitsundays but I'll save that for my next update, my fingers are tired!

Ciao for now.

Jared