Hello again!!! Well we have now spent about 10 days (stopped counting) in Carins. We arrived from Alice Springs and planned to get to Dariwn pretty quickly. We took for granted that this would be quite easy!, there are not many options to get to Darwin from Cairns and a couple of them consist of days on a train or bus. We are booked to get there over 4 days on the Desert Venturer a big bus that takes you off the beaten track over the top road to Darwin. Fantastic way to get there but we have had to wait 10+ days for the trip to leave. leaving tomorrow!

So what is Cairns like? Well we spent many days (it was bloody hard!) lazing by the lagoon, topping up our tan and bbq-ing our lunches on the free public bbq's. Cairns is really geared to the outdoor life and they really set it up so it's easy to spend your days chilling out doors. We have also used this chance to catch up on our banking etc. so that we are all set for South East Asia when we fly out on the 3rd of September. There is a big travelling community here and more than enough bars and clubs to accomodate. There isn't much to do here after a couple of days apart from drinking and the sleepless nights due to all the late night revellers can get a bit ...you know! Not complaining though and have learn't a few new Irish folk songs from the VERY loud Irish contingency at 4 am!!! Anyway things were getting a bit samey so we dipped into the Asia budget and hit the Great Barrier Reef again. Fantastic!!! Spent 2 days on a liveaboard, doing 7 dives including a night dive (done a couple of these now and cant really see the buzz here (other that the chance to see sharks!)) and a dawn dive which was lovely. Jay and I were first in the water which was an amazing feeling to be the only two for miles down there at dawn with a lot of sleepy fishes! We cant wait to dive again and are alreayd planning where this might be. Are visa's are due to run out at the begining of september and our Aus cash has pretty much already done that so we are going to do a bit of farm work for free board and lodgings down near Katherine for a couple of weeks. Then the fun really starts when we leave good ol' Aus on the 3rd of September. Anyway enough of me rambling on...we will try to update you again before we leave Aus x x x x x x x x