The landscape changed quite significantly after Townsville. From your rainforested hills meeting palm fringed beaches with mangrove inlets to a much drier, flatter type of countryside with the hills slowly receding inland. Miles of flat cane fields interspersed with a sugar mill or 2 and elaborate rail systems with cane trains of about 100 carriages cris crossing the Bruce Highway. The Bruce must be the most worked on bit of road in Australia. We have decided the...

By the time I got my act together this morning (each day its later) and reaslised it was going to be a pearler of a day the hire boat man had sold out of boats So plan B swung into action and we organised to go out to for the day to the 3 closest Islands to Mission Beach with Fozzie and his water taxi and 20 of our closest grey nomad friends (he says the backpackers won't go as its too expensive. Its only $50 !!!) Whilst waiting for Fozzie to bring his boat int...

OH yeah this was a wonderful from start to finish. woke up and got up, bonus and then off we set to catch up with the crew from Big Mama charters who took us out today on the GBR to a coral reef called Adelaide and it was spectacular. OK so it was a little ruff on the way out there and a few people felt discomfort but no one had a yawn so again, bonus. On board was about 12 people including the owners Stu, Lisa and their son Fletcher and his little tiny dog Coco...

Having been whitewater rafting a couple of times before in NZ and Canada and thourougly enjoying it we have always been left with the feeling that it was tamed a bit for the average tourist hence the decsion to go on the Xtreme tour on Australia's supposed river to raft the Tully with a mob called 'Rafting Thunder' I guess the nerves kicked in when we realised that we were 30 years older then the next person when we boarded the bus to head up to the river. There...

Take a look at this beastie, he is about 4 to 5 metres long missing his right front leg and very very ugly!!! We took a tinny out on the river to the back of South Mission beach. Not much was bitting ( I did get a very small bream) so we trolled the river up and back. It was a sunny day not like the weather forcast of rain, we had a great time. We came across him and his "friend" male or female on the mud bank suning themselves and we were very impressed. Earlie...