We arrived back in Cairns at 6:00am and were kicked off the boat by 7:30am. We picked up our rental car and headed to our hotel where we hung out poolside until our room was ready. It was great to be back in a roomy apartment in Cairns with a much better bed than we had in our cabin. We discovered a huge bat (flying fox) colony right in the middle of town. After all our efforts to get bat pictures in Brisbane, here were thousands of them. We took our cameras and...

We arrived in Brisbane on Tuesday the 18th, stop 6 in Australia, just as cyclone Marcia was building. While Brisbane is not right on the coast, it is close enough for the forecast to call for rain the first 5 days of our stay. Cyclone Marcia was a category 5 by the time it struck about 200 miles north of Brisbane. It did lots of damage up there but we only got the rain and some wind. We bravely booked a bicycle tour for day one and luckily it was mostly rain fr...