OMG!!!! Awesome day!!!!!!! Early start 710am pick up which was bit of shock to system - quick bus ride to Abel point Marina and 8 am we boarded our 37 metre boat for our 3 hr journey to the barrier reef. We had beautiful journey through some of the Whitsunday islands stopping at daydream island ( stunning stunning paradise) to pick up more people and then on through the shipping channel (with no ships!!!) which was very choppy and resulted in a rather green sam...

Stayed in townsville last night seems really nice city very chilled suburban feel. Fab seafront with a great tidal swimming pool which boys loved all very nicely done. Done a fair bit of driving. Beautiful scenery. It's amazing all the properties seem so well kept - in the middle of nowhere but immaculate. All the creeks are named too which is amazing as there are so many of them!! But I guess thats what they use for addresses. Lots of sugar cane still. Is eas...

Finally the sun shines and boy is it hot!! 35 to 37 C. Another lazy day on the beach- mission beach this time all v nice. Driving tomorrow off to Townsville.

First blog from Oz on our first real holiday day here. Really heavy rain again last night scary!!! Carried on into this morning so we had a slow start. Made it to the beach this afternoon though. Fortunately they have a stinger net on mission beach so we could play in the sea safe from the box jellyfish which is reassuring. Did have to shelter from cyclonic conditions a couple of times but on the whole not too bad. Is quite odd here as the rainforest literally c...