Looking forward to getting back to tropical North Queensland I landed in Cairns at arounf 9:30pm. I picked up my old car that had been cleaned by the long term parking people... and judging by how much the guy moaned about it you would have thought he built the car from scratch (although it was a little dirty... and b*****ed if I was going to clean it).

Checking into a backpackers around 10pm I was tossing up whether I could be bothered to go downstairs to the bar or not. Luckily I met a lovely french geologist, Melanie, who happened to have a spare beer in the fridge. So we sat out on the balcony and chatted in the warm tropical night.

The next day I had a sky dive booked for 7am... Too early for holidays... I woke up gave them a ring and the lovely girl at the sky dive company (Who I would get to know over the next few days) very happily changed my booking to the next morning. Happy I rolled over and went back to sleep until about midday.

With nothing to do I wondered around Cairns and had a nice relaxing day doing nothing. Melanie had flown back to Adelaide for work and in her bed was an english girl (who I have completely blanked on her name, possibly sarah) and her friend. The three of us headed downstairs to the bar and had a few drinks. Considering I had sky diving the next morning I wasnt in the mood for a massive night so we just had a few drinks and then called it a night.

The next morning bright eyed and hungover I walked across the street to the skydiving place. Of course my luck... the winds were too high so they postponed the jump until midday. Bored and dissapointed I headed back to the hostel checked out and bumped into the two english girls at the pool. We hung out there until midday where I went back for attempt no 2. no luck. postponed until tomorrow morning. Back to the pool again. Luckily the girls were still there and they had booked a white water reafting tour that afternoon. So off I went. Was a good fun afternoon with a good mix of just floating down the river on our backs and some decent rapids that would have hurt had you come out of the boat.

That night was supposed to be a quite one so I wasnt hung over for the next morning... that never happens in Cairns. I went downstairs to grab some dinner and ended up chatting to a dutch girl who showed me around the town. Was a fun night but ended up a very late night/early morning.

Attempt no 3. - 7am no deal again postponed until midday again.

Back to the hostel (after extending my stay but having to change rooms so I had no bed to hang out in) I lounged in the TV room watching the cricket for the day. The only interuption being a quick trip down to the sky dive place for attempt no4. postponed to tomorrow midday again...

The first few days I was in Cairns the place was overrun my hippies all getting ready to go to a 5 day music festival in the middle of the desert that the ecplise passed over. I was tempted to go and I changed my mind about 5 times each hour as to whether I should go or not... It would have been an interesting experience, but the music wasnt really my type of music and im not sure i could put up with that many hippies for 5 days. so I decided not to go. Still happy with that decision.

That night I checked into my third room in the same hostel. Always a good sign when you walk into a room and there is 4 goon casks sitting on the bench. I started chatting to a crazy UK air hostess and her friend, Dani and Tash, who apparently had a rather large night the night before and werent in the mood for drinking. While we didnt leave the room we did stay up and play drinking games with their left over goon that night. Fun night all round. The next day I headed down to the skydive place and finally cancelled my dive as it was postponed again... not very successful...

Dani, Tash and I jumped in the car and headed down to Mission Beach. Not the most exciting place. After a lazy walk on the beach we headed to the bottle shop and stocked up for the night. Back in the hostel the girls bumped into some pommy blokes they had met previously on their travels and the lot of us played drinking games late into the night... big night had by all.

Having had enough of mission beacj I headed down to townsville and checked into another hostel. That night I went out with a crazy pom who was travelling on some inheritance she received and some canadian girls. We went to some pretty terrible bars/clubs but we didnt care so it was a fun night. While waiting for the standard 4am kebab we met Gracie. Gracie, a 50 something aboriginal woman was apparently Prince William and Harry's sister. slightly dubious of her blood line I questioned her statement and was abruptly told that I worked for the CIA and was trying to steal state secrets from her (although not quite in those words).

Having finally convinced Gracie to go bother some other drunken backpackers we made it back to our hostel at 4:30am, only an hour until the solar eclipse that was passing over Nth Qld... stay awake or sleep for an hour... easy decision sleep through the eclipse. I did try and wake up but it was never going to happen. The only saving grace is that people in townsville said the eclipse was too far north to really see anything and the people up north said there was too much cloud cover so very few people actually saw it anyway.

Headed over to Magnetic Island and ran into the Crazy Pom and a couple of the people I went out with the night before at the ferry stop. once on Magnetic island I hired a crappy little suzuki topless thing to duck about the island in. Swung by the only Hostel on the island and picked un Aithne and we headed out to a nice swimming spot.

Halfway up a 4wd track we stopped and picked up and sweaty young german backpacker who looked like whe had been treking for a while. Nothing too exciting just skipped from isolated beach to isolated beach. At every beach we stopped at there was a max of two other people on the whole beach. All was going well until I tried to teach the girls how to body surf and surfed my face right into a rock. took a bit of skin off and I am still copping crap from all the guys on site (It looks as though someone has punched me in the nose).

Swung backto townsville and had Dinner with Tessa and Dee (two girls from high school). then off to bed and up at 4am to get to my flight. fun times.