Cairns: Sunday 30th January - Saturday 5th February

We will remember Cairns for two things; Cape Tribulation and Cyclone Yasi.

After a relatively short journey from Townsville, we arrived in Cairns 2 hours before we could check into our hostel so dumped our backpacks in a locker and met the Dutch guys for lunch. Cairns hostels seem to not have caught up with the price hikes in the rest of the country because we were paying $10 a night each for a dorm with a free meal thrown in. The hostel, Corona's, was basic but clean and we shared our 4-bed dorm with a couple of young Finnish girls who were pretty well behaved so it turned out to be a bit of a bargain.

After a couple of days getting to know the place and running into the usual terrible salesman patter in all the travel shops when trying to book our trip to Cape Tribulation, we eventually booked it through the hostel - it worked out cheaper, plus it turned out that the girl working there was also from Ipswich and had quite a few friends in common with Janine, small world!

Cape Tribulation, a tropical rainforest and national park north of Cairns so named by Captain Cook (the dude who claimed Australia for the English) because of all the ships that ran aground there, is a great day out. If you only got to see the beach then it would still be worth it as its one of the most incredible beaches we'd seen so far, with rainforest meeting crisp white sand and a turquoise ocean filled with coral. It's the only place in the world where you can have one foot in one world heritage site (Cape Tribulation) and the other in another (Great Barrier Reef) simultaneously. We also visited a zoo where tame wallabees and emu wander about and spotted a number of wild Cassawary's. These huge birds, the size of Ostrich's but with a blue colouring, have the title of most dangerous bird in the world having killed a number of humans with their razor-sharp claws. To be fair, they are selective with their killings, they only kill stupid people.

The journey home from Cape Tribulation was one dominated by talk of the fact that Cyclone Yasi had intensified. Whereas before it was a case of 'we'll have to stay indoors for a day or so', the news reports coming through to us made it clear that it was going to be a hell of a lot more serious than that and that we may be forced to evacuate due to the fact that there might not be an 'indoors' left to stay in. Phrases such as 'Biggest storm ever to hit the southern hemisphere' that were being thrown around by the sensationalist media didn't help either - to be fair to the Aussies, especially those from Queensland, they are pretty used to extreme weather events so when you see them starting to panic then you know its bad, like when you see air stewardesses strapping themselves into their seats on a plane - this was no good.

When we returned to Cairns we made our way straight to the supermarket to stock up on supplies, strangely enough a number of people had the same idea and the shelves were pretty empty so we had to be a little bit innovative with what we deemed 'essentials' - Instant macaroni and cheese, for example, although lacking in nutritional value required very little in the way of cooking! We chatted to the Dutch boys who offered us a place on their hostel's evacuation bus, leaving early the next morning but decided we'd stick it out at Corona being that it was on high ground and a sturdy building (somebody told us this fact and who are we to doubt them, being that we know collectively nothing about building sturdiness!).

Come the next morning, at around 6:30am - t-minus 16 hours until Yasi was expected to hit - we were awoken with a start by the hostel manager over the tannoy system and summoned to an emergency meeting where we were told that we had to make an immediate decision about whether we wanted to stay or go to an evacuation centre. This prompted much panic and some tears from the younger travellers, the Finnish girls who had only got back from clubbing about 2 hours ago sobered up pretty quickly! Janine and I were strangely calm about the situation, perhaps drawing on our (especially Janine's) more advanced years, and we took a few minutes to weigh up our options. It was a very difficult decision but in the end we decided to opt for a compromise and check in over the road at the spanking-new behemoth of a hostel called Gilligans, our logic being that the building was brand new and there was safety in numbers.

It turned out to be a great decision, after a long wait sitting amongst crowds of confused backpackers and TV crews in the hostel lobby we eventually got the keys to our room, not before having to put up with a huge drunken Aussie guy slurring his 2-cents and quasi-racist views about Aboriginals at us ('How is he drunk at 7 in the morning?'...dude pulls out a bottle of Jim Bean and takes a massive swig...'Ah, that'll be how'). All they had left were the slightly more expensive 'deluxe' rooms - a 6-bed dorm with tv, balcony and fridge which we were to share with another English couple and an English guy. We also briefly had another room-mate called Paul who was one of those ridiculously American people that you only see on TV, think 'Stiffler' out of American Pie, all high-5's and Yankiness. He told us he was planning on putting on a wingsuit and surfing the winds like a human kite...'Then i'll put it up on YouTooob and make millions, who WOULDN'T wanna see that s***?!'. We assumed he was joking until the next day we heard that some guy was thrown out because security found him on the edge of a balcony with a rope attached to himself, it may not have been Paul but if it was you gotta applaud the guy for going through with it. Stupid Yank.

So we spent the rest of the day watching Australia somehow chase down a 330 run lead and beat England in a one-day international and re-enacting moments with our own plastic cricket set that our room-mate Stu had bought the day before. He forgot to buy any food, but the cricket set was a stroke of genius! There was a weird atmosphere in the hostel with everyone waiting for the main event to start, constantly watching the continuous news alerts for more information, it sort of felt like being in line for a ride at Disney with the mix of fear and excitement. When Yasi did finally hit, Cairns was spared the brunt as it took a last minute turn to the south and so we experienced strong and noisy winds and a hell of a lot of rain but none of the damage or storm surges that had threatened. Most of the night was spent drinking beer and Goon and playing games and occasionally venturing out onto the balcony to witness the force of the storm, it was an extraordinary 24 hours and one that we'll remember for a long time.

After another night at Gilligans with our fellow Yasi crowd, this time drinking in the bar instead of our room, we returned to the cheap rooms at Corona. For our final day in Cairns we went to the Zoo housed in the dome on top of the casino and finally got our 'cuddle a Koala' picture that Janine had been waiting for, he was a cute little fella called Harvey who took a bit of a liking to Janine's 'assets', a man after my own heart. We also got to see various other cute and cuddly Aussie things, there was something called a sugarglider who looked like he belonged in a Disney cartoon and some little miniature wallabee-stlyle things (I am no David Attenborough as you may have noticed). We ended the day with a little window-betting at the casino (I was forbidden to gamble despite my protests that 'there's no luck involved when I'm playing'), had I bet any actual money at the blackjack table I am certain I would have won loads, Janine put 50 cents in a 'Pokie' (Aussie name for a Fruit Machine) and lost it all. Selfish.