Hello to all!! We are all in Sydney as of now. The blog was a bit confusing as Sydney does not come under the district it is actually in...if that makes sense at all....

I am going to to the blog for Cairns now that we are back at Paul and Janes. So if you want to see what Matt and I have been up to in the north of Oz then have a look here tomorrow.....

So after a few days of pretty awful weather in Sydney Matt and I decided to head north to try to get a little sunshine.....

We flew to Queensland, specifically Cairns with an airline called Jetstar.  This is a low-budget airline that pipes music into the cabin to placate travellers prior to take-off.  It fails miserably.  When we arrived in Cairns we tried to call a few hostels and managed to get through to one who informed us that they would pick us up 'shortly'.  Short-ly came and went as did length-ily.  Unperturbed by this, we grabbed the oldest taxi driver in town and headed into the city...finding oursleves outside the same hostel that was supposed to pick us up.  We explained that we had stood waiting but they said that they took a bit longer as 'you cannot plan for rush hour'.  When we asked about the free meal deal we were told, curtly, we were 'a bit late for that'.  We headed wearily to our room (I use that term loosely).  We turned around as soon as we spotted our room/bathroom/bed situation and asked for a refund as the whole thing was turning into a bit of a farce.  Soon after we found oursleves in jail after smashing up the place...no that was not reality...soon enough we exited the building after things became a little heated i.e. they would not give us our money back but 'agreed' to give us out room key deposits back (how gracious).  Apparently, had we removed our check-in cards and the map underneath that, we would have seen the sign informing us the hostile, em, hostel did not refund accommodation.

We did however find ourselves a lovely place along the esplanade and a woman called Hayley who was seriously helpful.  After a bit of a kip we headed to the managers office to attempt to sort out the problem of the refund.  Lesley an uncongenial beast, sorry, manager of the establishment did not refund our nights accommodation but DID badger us for information regarding our careers and travelling history.....Matt and I were slightly wound up and left after telling her to sleep well that night....or words to that effect...Incidentally 'rush hour' in this behemoth em, village is between 3.30pm and 5.30 NOT seven o'clock as stated by the staff at INTERNATIONAL BACKPACKERS.

Anyway we will leave that there (and you did get the short version!).  So we had a chilled out day having a wander and booking some trips for the next few days. 

We headed up to an Aboriginal part of the rainforest in Cairns and had a small walk throughout.  I jumped up and down on a suspension bridge and Matt nearly dropped his camera into the gushing rapids below.  Thankfully he didn't and I am alive.  We then made our way to this zoo where an Aussie woman and her family actually live.  We had a look at Diamond Pythons which are capable of reaching lengths of 8m!  These snakes are usually as deathly still, as a deathly still thing with a special reason to be still.  Today however it was pretty animated and had a good old glower (as snakes do) at Matt and then turned its head around and looked straight at me.  T'was pretty.  Next we moved on to the Cassowary (that may not be spelled correctly but you won't know what it is, and if you do, be polite and say you don't).  These are birds that are like emus and other really big birds.  The have a big chunk of cartilage on the top of their head that they butt people and animals with.  They also have three toes one of which has a talon the size of France, yes, France! It uses this talon to slice people like Lesley or other threatening beings with.  We checked out these very cool, expensive birds that entertained us as much as a bird could.  They were beautiful colours and made a lot of noise.  We also saw a gold wallaby, I stole it and sold it on ebay.  Turned out it was not real gold so I only got a fiver.  Ah well.

Moving on, we touched a Euro.  This is a kangaroo like animal that is cute and sleeps all the time.  We liked it a lot.  We also saw baby joeys and lots of other cool stuff.  After that we drove to Cape Tribulation Beach was lovely and we had a nice lunch.  We drove through Port Douglas and stopped at some picturesque points that we couldn't be bothered getting out of the van for!!

We also walked though a bit more of the rainforest and saw lots of green stuff, brown stuff, light green and dark green stuff....Really it was cool but Bellamy I am not, so I won't bore you with fascinating facts and let you look at the lovely pics. 

The next day we got up very early again and got to Marlin Jetty to go on an Ocean Spirit cruise.  It was pretty grim weather but we headed out and made it to the middle (in a way) point in the ocean.  Matt felt unwell and there was evidence of this on the surfacew of the water.  NICE.  We were very cold but went in the water for a bit of snorkelling.  It was seriously choppy.  Soon after we were lined up to go in the water to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef.  It was amazing and awe-inspiring.  I can see why people get hooked on it and I can see why people who have drowning issues can get hooked too!!

Met a few wicked guys on the cruise.  Greg, David and Ryan Tokyo.  We went out for dinner and drinks with them later on in the evening.  What a carry on!  Dave will not mind the picture evidence I am sure!  Great fun

Shazney xx