hello.....sorry it has been a while but sitting at a computer these days seems to be a bit of a task!!! Well, we made it through our weeks stay in Alice Springs, and when it came to it I wasn't brave enough to hold the snake! So adios Alice and hello East Coast- sun, sea, sand and plenty of scantily clad young bronzed men......ha! We left Alice Springs in a 4x4 bus which was to take us another 3000km across baron desert to Cairnes. Luckily the bus wasn't full so we had room to stretch out and relax but the crazy bus driver Shaun decided that we needed some proper Aussie culture so we had stories galore and this mad traditional Aussie song sang by some old timer, which eventually got stuck in our head and for weeks after too. Very annoying! When we left on our first day Shaun had told us that a category 4 cyclone (same as a hurricane) had hit a place called Innisfail only 40km south of Cairns and had left some hefty carnage along its path, including knocking part of his house down! We were all a tad concerned that we were driving into a disaster zone but he assured us that there was power and water so it would be fine. We would like to thank everyone who was concerned about our welfare, but we were fine, oh yer this was only one category down from Hurricane Katrina in the States and guess what- no one was bothered about us!!!! Cheeky gits, think your getting gifts when we get home you can think again! Even though the cyclone had hit land 000's of km away we still got battered by torrential rain and winds which meant we were driving through sand storms and then what felt like muddy rivers!! Because this part of Oz is so baron and hardly any traffic comes through they haven't tarmaced the roads which was pretty scary after the rain as the bus was sliding all over the shop, and we even passed 4 or 5 big lorries just stuck in the road! Luckily our driver had some awesome driving experience and we made it unscathed but when the bus is travelling down hill side ways it becomes a little hair raising! Eventually that night we made it to a farmstay where the only neighbours these folks had was 200km away! These guys were ace, they fed us an open fire cooked meal and had pets like lambs, dogs and even baby kangaroo's which we got to feed- so sweet but we felt bad that weeks earlier we ate their parents!!! Next day we headed off and learnt about the story behind the Waltzing Matilda song which was pretty cool, and even got to visit the museum dedicated to the guy who wrote it, Banjo Patterson. Eventually we made it to Cairns, but there wasn't much to say about it. Quiet little city, but we had some ace local seafood and $6 T-bone steaks, mmmm.