Townsville & Cairns

We left Airlie beach and headed for our penultimate stop in Townsville further up the East Coast. This was to be our launchsite for what is regarded as the best wreck dive in the world, the SS Yongala. Unfortunately, when we got there, the company that my Lonely Planet had listed as doing dives every Sunday had been taken over by ProDive (a huge dive company based in Cairns). This scuppered my plans as they apparently only dived the wreck every 2nd day, and I had missed that days dive and would have to wait until Monday to try again. Unfortunately due to the tight schedule we had and the bus itinerary, we weren't able to do this. I was absolutely gutted, but at the end of the day I could only blame myself for not checking in advance what the situation was. A harsh lesson learnt…! ( On the upside, Mairead hasn't dived it either so its not like she can tell me wind me up by saying how good it is )

As we then had the afternoon and evening to ourselves, we decided to explore what was going on in town. Townsville, is reportedly the fastest growing city in Australia at the moment, however there didn't seem to be an awful lot going on in the town. Saying that, we struggled to find a room for the night as that weekend was the Townsville show and the local rugby league team, North Queensland Cowboys, were playing at home. This meant that we at least had something to do while we were in town and after losing the discussion to go to the rugby game, we headed off to see the show not entirely sure what it was. In the end this was a great idea as we had loads of fun at the show.It is a travelling show that runs across most large towns in Australia over the course of the year. It was a huge event though, we had attended expecting something small like the Irish Festival, and ended up with something a little more like Alton Towers.

It was the sort of show that you can imagine in rural America and there was something for everyone at it. There was the traditional town show competitions such as best cake and largest vegetables grown. There was lots of big funfair rides for the older kids, a petting zoo and loads of animal sections for the smaller kids. And in the middle of it all, in a large field there were regular shows. They started with lots of exhibition races with all sorts of vehicles from motorbikes to ride on lawnmowers - Seriously, those things can fairly move. There was also a display of stunt driving and then a demolition derby. There was also monster truck display, but that was the final act and we had enough of the show by that point. It may not have been what I had planned to do in Townsville, but it was an enjoyable evening and a great display of Australiana.

The next day we headed to Cairns and the last stop on the Australian leg of our tour.Cairns is a huge place and since they expanded the airport it has just exploded as a destination.Its position as either the start or end of most people's itineraries means that it is full of backpackers. It is also well positioned for the Great Barrier Reef and is the diving capital of Australia - Cairns as an area certifies more new divers every year than anywhere else in the world. (Koh Tao in Thailand is 2nd). It's in a great location, right near the top of Australia and smack bang in the tropics. As a result, even though it was winter, the temperature was still between 28 - 30 degrees while we were there. Despite this good weather,Cairns is a beach town with no beach.There are so many nasty things on the water around the coastline from crocs to stinger jellyfish, that you can't swim there. To rectify the situation, they have built a giant saltwater lagoon on the shorefront which allows people to swim and cool off and is a great focal point for the town.

The other draw for tourists in this area are the rainforests in the area and we took the opportunity to take a daytrip into the Daintree National Park which is mainly rainforest. The rainforest itself is only a small(ish) part of the national park now, but it still fairly impressive. The rainforest is believed to be the oldest rainforest in the world and although there is only a small proportion of it left, it's quite impressive nonetheless. The highlight of the tour is a trip to the Cathedral Fig Tree which is a 500 year old giant fig tree (surprisingly) We then went around other parts of the rainforest and went to a waterfall called Millaa Millaa Falls which is well known around the world. It was the waterfall used in the Timotei ads and the waterfall where Peter Andre filmed Mysterious Girl. So we decided to take a quick dip (despite the fact that the water was really cold) and try and recreate some of them. Let's just say, my 6 pack is definitely the fridge kind and it wasn't a good show - good laugh though.

The next day, we got a chance to dive the reef, which is what just about everyone who passes through here does. We chose to go from further up the coast and a small town called Port Douglas as we had heard the quality of these outer lying reefs was better. We had to leave our hostel at 6 in the morning to get to our boat, but it was worth it. If ever there as something to compare the slick operations in Cairns to what we had done in Thailand, this was it. The boat was a gorgeous 30m Catamaran which was full of staff and a different world to the basic boat and kit in Thailand. Despite the fact that the boat was full, there were only 2 other qualified divers on the boat with us. The rest of the people were either just snorkeling, or doing try dives on the reef. We had 2 great dives on the reef. It wasn't very deep, but the quality of the reef was good and there was a lot of marine life that I managed to take lots of photos of. My favourite one was "Daisy" a huge potato cod, which hangs around the reef, waiting to be fed by passing tour boats. Check out the pics on the site, that is one BIG fish - its not photo trickery when it's swimming beside Emma.

Apart from that, their wasn't an awful lot else in Cairns to see and do, the town is basically a tourist hotspot so it's mainly known for its pubs which I also sampled a lot of. If anyone is there, I can heartily recommend PJ O Briens, and the woolshed which are already legendary and deserve there rep. We had a few pints in each of those, and then maybe a few more J After 4 days in Cairns, it was time to leave.We left Cairns, with our tans slightly topped up, nice and relaxed and looking forward to New Zealand and the next leg of our trip in the campervan round NZ.