As the bumpy flight set off from Wellington we were on our way to Oz. After a few amazing weeks in New Zealand it was strange to think that the Kiwi Experience was just the 'holiday' or warm-up act for the main event - a potential two years in Australia. But now we were touching down in Queensland to begin the real adventure. Our starting point was Cairns to the far northeast - departure point for the Great Barrier Reef - but our focus was on finding farm work to qualify us for a 2 year visa.
We were met at the airport by Vicky and Dave who had just finished working up in the Tablelands and were joining us in the hunt for fruit picking in the sun.
Our first evening was spent catching up on the eventful couple of months since we last saw eachother in Liverpool whilst drinking our first goon of the trip. (For anyone who doesn't know, goon is the cheapest of cheap wine, bought in 4L boxes with questionable ingredients (egg whites) but surprisingly drinkable when nothing better can be afforded).
The next day was Anzac Day so with all the shops and banks closed we headed out for the day with Vicky behind the wheel to the Millaa Millaa waterfall circuit. After an hour of winding roads through the tablelands we arrived at the first and biggest of the waterfalls...which Lise thought she had seen somewhere before. She had, it was only the waterfall from Peter Andre's famous Mysterious Girl video!! Everyone was very excited by this!

After a sunbathe and a swim, lunch and many posing photographs we headed off to the next waterfall which we saw from the top, cascading over the rocks to the plunge pool below, where rainbows formed in the spray.
The last waterfall was maybe the most picturesque, more isolated than the others. After more photographs we set off for Cairns via a stop at a cheesery/dairy for incredible homemade rum n raisin ice cream!
The next day we sorted phones and bank accounts while Dave and Vicky rang farms to ask about work. We were up for anything except banana farms - breeding ground for snakes, spiders and rats as far as I was concerned - but eveywhere said the same thing: "there's nothing right now, maybe in a few weeks..." we didn't have a few weeks though so I reluctantly agreed to ring banana farms. I don't know if I was happy or sad when after a weekend on the phone even the banana places had no work. We were all getting impatient and the overcast weather meant snorkelling trips to the reef were cancelled. Conscious of the money we were spending while we sat around getting nowhere we needed a back up plan. After changing our minds every few hours we eventually settled on flying to Melbourne to stay with my family while we worked out what to do, before meeting a guy in our hostel who told us of a zoo near Melbourne where a friend of his had done wwoofing (doing work which counts towards a second year visa, in exchange for food and accommodation). A plan was forming and after ringing Bronwen the zookeeper it was decided - we were going to be zookeepers! (Until paid farm work came up at least). So we left Dave and Vicky selling their car, repacked our bags and headed to Melbs...