During our flight to Cairns from Perth I eagerly kept my eyes to the window to look out for the "Red centre" aka. Aires Rock. We flew over some lovely coloured dry desert-like areas with yellows, golds and reds and then bright blues of rivers mingled in.

Finally we saw the "big rock" and it didnt seem that impressive. There are some rocks nearby that looked more impressive and bigger.

Once in Cairns we were driven to the Asylum hostel, the staff seemed very friendly and they gave us a free upgrade from dorm beds to our own room. What nice people! So we were booked in for 1 week with the plan to get jobs. We polished up our CV's and set off sending them where ever we could. We were a little startled by the amount of experience that seemed to be required for jobs such as supermarket assistance, gardener and for a hotel cleaner they wanted to test my bed making skills... eh?? The Asylum hostel had events on such as an all you can eat BBQ and 'mad mondays' which meant lots of Goon (cheap wine) and a fun drunken night out around the bars so thankfully there was some rest bite from job hunting. We also got vouchers for free evening meals most days of the week at the Wool Shed of chilli or spag-bol. The sea front at Cairns was nice, not for soaking up the rays as there are signs warning you of possible crocs but for the nice board walk that meandered the shore ending at the harbour. Near the library the trees were full of flying foxes (Fruit bats) that chatted all day long and then at dusk set off on a mass exodus to find a good fruit tree for tea. We also discovered the statue birds! This is our name for them, 40cm tall bown bird with longish legs and a longish neck aka Bush Stone Curlew. When they saw you coming they would stand perfectly still meaning you could quite easily not notice them. They are brilliant!

Luckily for us things had turned positive on the job front as I had been in touch with Unilever and had managed to get a placement at the Sydney office for 14 weeks but meant that I would have to leave Andrew behind on the East coast so that I could quickly whizz down to Sydney for work.

As a celebration of me getting a job we took a snorkling trip to Green Island so we could see the Great Barrier Reef. After a 45min kataraman ride we arrived a small paradise-esque island with jungle and beaches. We, along with a boat load of people set off down the pier in awe of such a beautiful place. We found the snorkle hire, dumped our bags and headed to the water. The water was cooler than what we were used to in Asia and took a little coaxing to ease ourselves in, once in it took a while to find fish and coral was no where to be seen. Andrew was having problems with his mask steaming up, obviously his quality of spit that day was not up to scratch. Once nearer the pier that we walked on earlier the fish started to appear and so the fish signs we had learned during our PADI course were in full flow. The highlights was a stingray and a totally awesome turtle dude that looked alot like Crush from Nemo. I would get so excited when we saw one of these that getting my brain to convey the correct fish sign underwater and my eagerness to do it as quickly as possible so that Andrew could see what i had spotted often meant that I would take in a mouth full of salt water and get to the surface coughing. We thought we spotted a sea snake which was a guarenteed salt water cougher! Although we were pleased to have found some fish we were disappointed that we hadn't seen much coral and we had expected more sea life. I suppose our snorkeling in Thailand and Malaysia had left expectations high. I hear the Great Barrier Reef is more impressive the further away from the Australian mainland but this would mean boating for anything up to a day to get to the really good spots.

The next day we got on the Premier coach heading south with Andrew getting off at Mission Beach and myself staying on until Airlie Beach.

Croc watch = 0 but we are getting close