Heya everybody!!!! Hope your all well. We've been back in the backpacker world for nearly a month now and we're loving it!!! After flying out of Melbourne we spent a week in Cairns, Its quite a nice little town, not the city we were expecting, not a lot to do which didn't cost lots of money. We went diving in the great barrier reef which was amazing, we'd forgotton how much fun it was, the reef was amazing and we saw 3 sharks!! (two white tipped and a leopard not a tiger!!) and also swam along with a huge green turtle which was really great!! Another day in Cairns we went on a tour up to Cape Tribulation which was nice, we had a little tour around the rainforest (i think my mum would have appriciated it more than we did) we also saw some crocs in the wild which was cool.

After Carins we went to mission beach, a place which is mainly there for doing ski diving and stuff like that but we're saving that for new zealand so we just chilled out. The beach was nice but all the beachs north of fraiser you couldn't swim in without stinger suits becasue it was stinger season- very annoying!! After that we went to Magnetic island, which was a really cute island we hired scooters again and zoomed around there for a couple of days- a lot more health and safety for the scooters compared to those in thailand! Next stop was Airlie beach, this was a little party town on the coast where you caught your boat to the whitsundays, we had to hang around for a while there before our boat left, didn't really get up to much apart from relaxing and making friends.

Our Whitsunday trip was amazing. It was a 2 day, 2 night cruise on a sailing boat called the british defender, 28 people and 4 staff. Our group was really fun, we had 9 crates of beer and 14 goons between us.... oh dear! managed to finish them off though!! We had amazing weather, spent alot of time just relaxing on the deck soaking up the rays. We did a few snorkles, which were a good laugh, not the visibility there was in cairns but we saw some flippin enormous fish! We visited White haven beach which was just as the name suggests!! Could have spent all week there, it was like paradise! In the evenings we just chilled out on the boat, the sunsets were unreal. our cook, natalie was amazing!! it was so nice not just eating super noodles! Emily slept out on the deck both nights (anna only managed one due to extreme triedness from the 6am starts), although it was cold and uncomfortable it was amazing. The night sky was amazing you could see the milkyway very well and we saw about 20 shooting stars!

After another night on airlie beach we caught the bus to a cattle station called krombit- this was part of our oz experience bus tour thing and although it sounds really random it was really good fun. We went horse riding, clay pigeon shooting, whip cracking, mechanical bull riding, and even had a go at lasooing some goats!!! after spending a night there in like the comfiest beds ever we went to Rainbow beach, another small beach town where you caught the ferry to fraiser island. Fraiser island is a large sand island which we did a 4x4 drive on (we weren't old enough to drive though booo) wouldn't have really wanted to drive though as the roads were so bumpy. There were 11 of us in a group; me and em, 4 scottish guys, 2 irish girls, an english guy and two swiss guys. We had an amazing time. The weather was a bit rubbish. Rainy nights and mornings but in the afternoon it mostly cleared up. We visited some nice lakes and swam in them, did some good walks. We were there two nights and camped which was good fun, despite the rain, most the group oppted to sleep in the car! We met a few dingos along the way. Now we are in Brisbane, haven't had much time to explore yet as have spent alot fo time in bed as the last week we've had to wake up at 6am pretty much everyday. We went to the rugby last night with the two swiss guys, it was really fun, not quite the atmosphere of a game at the lane but was a laugh! next stop surfers paradise and byron bay.... will write soon!