Last Saturday was Australia Day, a big public holiday over here. We celebrated by having a traditional Ozzie style BBQ at Debbie and Grants. Our Irish mates (Denise and Rob) came over as well as some of Debbie and Grants mates. We all had quite a few drinks and it was decided that we should collect cane toads from the garden and have a race!! Collecting them wasn't too difficult (well Debbie did all of the hard work here) if you can avoid the poisonous glands on their backs. We then painted them so we had a toad each and then released them in the middle of a circle drawn on the lawn, they jumped away so quickly it was difficult to see who won so we recollected them and had another race!

The Sunday we had a short lie-in and headed up the coast to Port Douglas to have a look at their famous markets, they were nice. Sarah saw loads she wanted to buy, but being in charge of the money I rejectedher requests for spending money this time! We had a nice lunch followed by an hours snooze on the grass under the palm trees before heading to the rainforest, a place called Mossman Gorge. We all went swimming in the river here the water was really lovely and cold, very relaxing until you jump in and get taken by the current and end up 50m downstream! We went back via the beach where I proposed, the weather was beautiful, check the photo's. It turns out it was only about 10kms from where Debbie and Grant got married, I obviously picked a good location! When we got back we had some gorgeous cocktails made by Debbie and then a final swim in their beautiful pool.

We got up pretty early on Monday as our flight was at 10:30am, after checking in we went to the Botanical Gardens in Cairns where Debbie used to work. After breakfast we had a quick tour, saw a Stinging Tree in a glass cabinet, apparently this tree is pretty savage and like most stuff over here will hurt you pretty bad!! We then got given some miracle fruit, followed by a piece of lemon - after eating the miracle fruit the lemon seemed sweet. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing bitter and sour foods (such as lemons and limes) consumed later to taste sweet. This effect lasts between thirty minutes and two hours. Pretty crazy fruit!!

It was really sad to leave Cairns, great friends and so many fantastic memories in such a short space of time, I'm sure that one day we will be back; we saw a lot but there is so much more to see! Big thanks again to Debbie and Grant for being so hospitable, was so great to catch up again and we looking to repaying the favour back in the UK.

Hope everyone is well, thanks for all the lovely messages since we dropped the news. It's so lovely that people are happy for us, we are still both thrilled and I don't think that Sarah can quite believe it, although she does love the ring!

Keep in touch, loads of love,Andrew and Sarah xxxx