After a pretty chilly flight to Cairns in the early morning and pretty much no sleep, Roser and I, both being disorganised, caught the shuttle to the Esplanade and started looking for hostels. We bumped into a german girl who was trying to get out of her hostel early and she gave us a good deal on accommodation so we just took that to save hassle. It was raining lots in Cairns and pretty chilly after Darwin and I only had 2 days there before jumping on the Oz Experience bus down the coast so didn't want to waste any time. After a quick trip to a tourist information office and I came out having booked the one thing available for that afternoon that was guaranteed to keep me awake and not matter if it rained all day - white water rafting! So we looked around the city in the rain for a bit (not that inspiring) then I went and jumped on a bus up to the Barren river. It actually got pretty hot and the water was fairly low so we had to bounce ourselves off lots of rocks on the way down whilst having both hands on the paddle and trying to swat biting marsh flies all at the same time. Was loads of fun but the photographic evidence that I did it was way to expensive so you'll just have to believe me!
When I got back Roser had made friends with the rest of the girls in the dorm so the 5 of us tried to go out and get the free dinner that came with the hostel. After being deafened by screeching birds that must have been doing some kind of mating ritual we arrived at the very closed looking restaurant - the entire streeet had had a power cut - so we ended up going for paid dinner instead - not so fun but probably nicer! We decided to hire a car the next day so that we could be more independant and get out of Cairns. In the morning April (canadian), Melanie (german), Ai (japanese), Roser (spanish) and I went and hired a little car. Given that they all drive left hand drive automatics I became nominated driver and we set out to Palm cove up the coast. I had no problems driving apart from the windscreen wipers and indicators being on the wrong stalks (this came in handy when it rained!). We had lunch, swam in the nets and listened to music via the i-sausage on the beach until a storm came in with fat rain and we had to head back down the beach back to the car. After that we decided to drive up to the Mossman gorge where we could go swimming in the river. It carried on raining but we felt more appropriately dressed when walking through the rainforest in bikinis and sarongs than the plastic poncho clad tourists. After a minor incident with Melanie changing in the dark toilets and a very large spider and a LOT of screaming we headed to Port Douglas and grabbed an amazing mexican dinner before trying to drive home. This was not as much fun as the drive up as the winding Captain Cook Highway round the cliff edges in the driving rain and dark was a bit hairy. I did my bit for the Australian ecological problem of Cane toads by squashing about 10 and making sure about 20 more were already dead on the way...
Friday morning I had to set out early for the Oz bus. Bumped into Elinor again who was only staying on as far as Mission beach to do her sky dive so again I only had about 10 minutes feeling lonely! We went to a crocodile farm which was awesome as we got to hold Fluffy (baby croc), Caesar (black headed python), Bluey (blue tongued lizard) and a dingo pup. We watched the big crocs being fed by a couple of psychos wearing ripped shirts and brandishing sticks and some chicken wings (complete with feathers!). They basically provoked the crocs out of their ponds and up on the grass by the fence and teased them with the stick until they were really mad - then fed them! After this we headed off for Townsville, dropping Elinor off on the way and then caught the ferry over to Magnetic Island (something went wrong with Cook's compass when he sailed there, hence name). By this point I'd met Tracy who rows for City of Bristol and who had about 3 mutual friends and we'd well and truly talked rowing. The backpackers hostel had live comedy with a guy called Dave Hughes or "Hughsie" who implied he was well known but maybe only in Oz! he was relatively funny, but I still fell asleep lying on the decking in the bar (exhasusted not drunk!) In the morning we went koala hunting as there is a massive wild koala population on the island, but we didn't have time to do the whole walk and it was boiling hot so unfortunately didn't see any. We then caught the ferry back to Townsville and headed south with the Oz experience bus to Airlie Beach. This was a bit off an odd leg as everyone else on the bus would be stopping there to sail and dive and I was heading straight through as I did that last year and wanted to save time and money. The next day was equally as weird as everyone on the bus had just done a 3 day saling trip and were talking about it, but at least I could join in having done it before. This was the longest day of driving and involved about 11 hours on the road, but once we got the the cattle station at Kroombit we had an AWESOME time. Pretty much justifies its own blog entry!