Katie & Caspar: Hi Everyone, another update to let you all know what my lover & myself have been up to. We spoke to the girls a couple of days ago & they're fine. A brief chat but just to let us know that the cleaning isn't too bad and the people in their remote mining village aren't as scary as they thought they would be. Although aparrantly one has a wooden leg - I'm sure they'll explain in full soon. I think they have another week there and then they'll be able to be in touch soon. They have no signal and there's no internet either, so it's pretty remote! Caspar & I have travelled a lot, after Port Douglas we arrived back in Cairns ready for Caspar to start his 4 day dive qualification course with Pro Dive. 2 days in the pool and then 3 days on a boat. We had a great time living on the boat and we had a good crowd. We were able to dive together after the 2nd day after Caspar had officially qualified, which was quite nice. Although unfortunately on our first dive together we got our compass bearings slightly wrong and totally missed the dive site and ended up at probably the most boring place on the Great Barrier Reef. Plus it was the only dive we hired a digital camera for - so we were pretty bummed, until we were about to surface at the end of the dive and a big turtle appeared from nowhere, so that was pretty special. We had an extra couple of days in Cairns where we decided to book ourselves on a proper dive adventure seeing as we both loved the Pro Dive one so much, and ended up on a dive trip with Mike Ball for 4 nights. We had a fantastic time, on a pristine boat with a brilliant crew and even better group of people. We did some absolutely stunning diving, with every dive teeming with marine life & tons of fish, several sharks, snakes, eels and much more. It was just out of this world. We hired a digital camera again, but this time for a day so we got a lot of great pictures this time (although unfortunately we didn't win anything in the photo competition). Our last dive was at Cod Hole and we had a very strong current running so it was an extremelyl fast dive which we had no control over, but fantastic fun - well, so I thought but Caspar didn't agree. Probably a bit scary for a newly qualified. However, the highlight of our trip was the Minke Whales. We were hoping they would turn up for us to see and they did, 4-6 at one time. Due to government restrictions we were one of only a handful of boats allowed to get in the water and snorkel with them and it was just an absolutely mind blowing experience. I can't even put it into words, you'll just have to talk to me when I get home about it and see the pictures! After our dive trip which took us to Lizard Island we caught a small 8 seater plane back to Cairns (which was part of the trip) which flew at 700ft above the reef and all the dive sites we had just visited. A great way to finish the whole experience. So from there, we left Cairns and started heading south to Mission Beach where we spent a couple of days - we intended to do some white water rafting but turns out the river was closed for the next 3 days due to work being carried out on the power station (you'd be surprised, they actually 'stop' the river flowing at night... random) so we had some time to kill. We decided to go offroad to the outback and we headed for the Undara National Park to visit the lava tubes formed by volcanic erruptions 190,000 thousand years ago. I think we were the youngest people on the tour we went on, but we felt we were being cultural. We even took extra supplies of water & fuel, that's how far out we went! We managed to get white water rafting on our way back through Mission Beach which was fantastic, very hair raising and literally a white knuckle ride, but we spent a good 4 hours actually rafting so it was a great day. However, Caspar & myself ended up in the raft with 3 13 year old boys and a parent celebrating a birthday... not the most coordinated team, but we made it and we were the only raft to not fall out!! Brilliant day! From Mission Beach (which is beautiful by the way) we made our way down again towards Townsvillie. We had a few van troubles on the way which consisted of actually breaking down 50km north of Townsville & we had to walk for an hour to the nearest caravan park for help - but we eventually got a tow to Townsville where we had some minor work done, and now all is well again. We had to spend one night in a luxury hotel which as you can imagine was VERY annoying for us... NOT!! We're currently at Airlie Beach where we've just booked to do some sailing around the Whitsunday Islands from 1st-4th July, and the day before we have an adventure day doing a scenic helicoptor tour, quad biking, jetskiing and parasailing.... should be fun!!!! Will post some photos today or tomorrow. Hope all is well, lots of love Katie & Caspar XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX