Hello all,

Wahayyy finally got out of Cairns!! Didn't think i was ever goin to get out of the place. Was stuck there for an extra 3 days cus of floods. They had to stop all the coaches leavin. I have never seen rain like it, and us english people complain about the rain, u wanna see tropical rain...

Well the weather didn't stop me from avin fun, i designed a game in the swimming pool with the lads. it was similar to water polo, goals at each end of and a fly away football. well u jus had to smash the ball bouncing across the surface of the water into the goals!! it was great fun but we had some funny looks from other people in the hostel wondering why we were in the pool in the middle of a monsoon. well it is better than stayin inside your room all day and after all you would jus be as wet bein outside the pool!! ha ha

the weather cleared up a bit so i booked a day on the barrier reef, snorkling and scuba diving, it was awesome! we sailed out on a big boat for 2 hrs to the reef but the sea was quite rough and everyone was feeling ill. 2 german lads were really bad and didn't leave the boat all day!!

We went snorklin first, there was a really strong current so if u wern't a strong swimmer u had to be very careful. the reef was beautiful, but we had to be careful not to bang or stand on it cus it would kill that area. There were thousands of dif types of fish all dif colours, shapes n sizes it is a dif world. I then went scuba divin, we went down 12 metres but the visibility wasn't very gud, it was much better snorklin. We saw sum dead coral, i wanted to see a turtle but unfortunately didn't. i still don't understand why they took up divin in that spot, although the experience was gud the visibility was poor. would of been much better to have dove closer to where we snorklin.

i'm in a town called townville at the mo, been here for 2 nights!! it's a 6 hr drive south from cairns. I'm leavin shortly to go to airlie beach which is 5hrs south. the weather is great here, it finally feels like i'm in aus!! ha ha i went to magnetic island yesterday for the day, it a 20min boat journey. i bought an all day bus pass to travel around the island. it was a great experience, i did abit of sun bavin tryin to catch up on my tan and then went for a long walk around some forts which is meant to be the best place for kowalla spotting. I met 2 women from bacelona, and we saw 3 cowalla's. it was awesome, i have never seen one before and didn't want to pay to see one in a reserve, i wanted to see one in the wild, got some great photo's. got back late last night and had an early night ready for travelling today.

Take care, hope ur all ok.

Jimmy