Today is our last full day in Cairns before heading off down the coast again to experience ventures anew. We decided to make the most of the good weather yesterday with a trip to one of the Northern beaches with Lynsey and an absurdly large picnic. After picking her up from her hostel we headed on up to Trinity beach, as despite spending a few days there with Lynn and Leslie all those months ago, we never actually made it down onto the sand! The morning sun was...

After spending the previous couple of days trawling through the internet trying to find ourselves jobs, we were glad of the break yesterday as we headed out to Fitzroy Island for the day with Lynsey and Marcus. We met them at the ferry terminal just before nine o'clock in the morning and after persuading them that we knew where we were going, we were soon on the boat for the short forty-five minute journey across the water. Once we had arrived we headed straight...

We are now both fully qualified entry level scuba divers, after successfully completing the last two days of our Open Water dive course out on the Great Barrier Reef. We were picked up nice and early on Friday morning to make our way to the harbour where we would board the boat that would take us out onto the reef, but we were delayed for some time as Matt had managed to miss his departure point and we had to go back again to get him. When we eventually made it ...

We have now finished the first part of our scuba diving course, both in the pool and in the classroom, and tomorrow we head out to the Great Barrier Reef for a couple of days in the open water. We turned up yesterday morning to the first day of our course along with about twelve others and were taken into the back to what would be our classroom over the next couple of days and after completing a quick medical check (had no idea how hard it is to stand on one leg...

We have now been Australia for a few days and Cairns is not exactly what we were expecting! We made our horrendously early flight from Christchurch and after a hectic transit in Melbourne where we almost didn't get let through to departures, we were back in the air flying along the East coast to Cairns. Whereas the flight from Christchurch was one to forget (the cold of the mountains causing just a bit of turbulence!!) the flight up to Cairns was brilliant as ...