Hi Everyone,

We made it to Australia safely! Its boiling hot and the sun just doesn't stop shining!!

Cairns, Australia:

We arrived in Cairns early in the morning after 2 near sleepless flights! The first flight took us to Darwin and then we changed, after a 2 hour ish wait, to our flight to Cairns. We both very tired and extremely grumpy, made worse by the Aussie authorities who took our sunscreen and apple juice off us! I had to declare 2 packets of tea that we picked up in China but all was fine. My can of dry shampoo had exploded in my bag which probably looked a bit dodgy! The Aussie customs system is much stricter than all the past countries we went to, they even had a dog sniffing us for drugs. It picked out one guy who got questioned!

Luckily, we booked our hostel in advance and got picked up from the airport. After meeting the friendly but loud American owner, we had showers and shoved a massive load of dirty clothes in the wash. We hadn't done a wash for weeks!! We are so grim! We forced ourselves to stay awake and spent our day at the really cool lagoon along the esplanade. That night we signed up to a trip that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef. Jonny wanted to do his open water dive course (which lets him scuba dive by himself) and I just signed up to snorkeling. After grabbing our free meal, offered to us by the hostel, we gladly went to sleep.

The next day we woke up after 16 hours of sleeping and did nothing for the rest of the day! Cairns is a nice place but with little to do, apart from going to the lagoon. The roads our big and wide, we both feel like its rather American. A lot of people drove big jeeps. And we find everything is expensive!! We had gotten used to the cheap as chips prices in S.E Asia and we were both shocked! But finally, we were able to buy some delicious full fat milk and cereal! Proper breakfast from now on!

As part of Jonny's open water dive course, he spent the day at 'Scuba School' where he learnt all about diving and tried out some techniques in a pool. He loved it! And I just spent a relaxing time shopping in the mall and then sunbathed by the lagoon all day! There is no beach in Cairns, but just a waterfront with like mudflats. Signs were up warning us about crocodiles, jellyfish etc! Eeek!

The Great Barrier Reef, Australia:

We headed out on 'Rum Runner' our boat for the 2 days. We met the rest of the group and the crew which were all really friendly. We had bunk beds to sleep in which were cool. We set off on a seriously choppy and wavy sea making a few of us, including me, slightly sea sick! Eventually we got to the first site, where jonny and I went snorkeling. I was only in for like 20 minutes as I was petrified of the deep water. It took me 15 minutes to summon up the courage to jump in the water. I have never been so scared! I held Jonny's hand the whole time and as the water was so choppy it made it worse. Jonny stayed in for ages. The coral was really pretty and there were loads of fish! We had hired a underwater digital camera this time as we knew that the Reef would have loads of fish and things. It meant that Jonny could take pics of what he saw when he was diving to show me and to show all of you.

I sunbathed for the rest of the day on the deck with another girl called Christine who was as equally as scared of the water as I was! Jonny went diving…

Over to me… Dive 1 was just to get used to the water, so we only went down to about 6m, it was really exciting to be controlling myself though + I thoroughly enjoyed it! We saw a large Red Bass fish - see the pictures when I upload them + some beautiful coral.I have never seen plant life like it!Our instructor was Masa (Japanese name) and had completed over 6000 dives! He was really friendly + funny, helping us along and making sure we completed all the skills we needed to, to become proficient at diving.The other person learning was called Carrie, although her real name was Russian and I could not pronounce it.

Dive 2 involved more skill practice - for example you have to remove your regulator (breathing appliance) and be able to put it back in your mouth, whilst under water (obviously!).We had to take off our masks about 5m down and put them back on + complete loads of other things like that too.It was really fun + I enjoyed the second dive a lot more than the 1st!

That evening we watched sunset and had an extremely delicious meal which included a fish that the skipper had caught the previous day! The certified divers went out on a night dive. Just as they got kitted up, the skipper started playing the tune on jaws over the speakers to scare them! Was hilarious. There were so many stars but I couldn't see the Plough!

The next morning Jonny went on another dive while I had a lie in…The third dive was the best of the lot, we saw millions of fish + some beautiful coral and went down to about 16m. We stood on the bottom and shook hands, before looking at some clown fish and other cool fish too!

Before lunch and the last of Jonny's dives, everyone went snorkeling including me! I stayed in for longer this time! The coral was beautiful, so many different colours and we saw a lot of fish. The skipper cut up some watermelon which he used to feed a huge Napoleon Fish! It was massive. We explored more of the reef. I liked these tiny fish that were electric blue in colour! This snorkel was great until I saw a shadow of a huge fish that scared me completely! It turned out to be the Napoloen fish from before but still it frightened me! Just as I was getting back onto the boat, one of the German guys said to me that there was this huge fish under the boat… promptly I jumped onto the boat as quick as I could. Jonny pursued it with the camera!

I was sad to be on my final dive already. This one was excellent, we went down to about 10m and saw one really big fish in the distance - a butterfly cod, apparently. We each did a forward and backward role, our final skill, which was a little disorientating, but we managed and both got our scuba diving certificates! Hurray!

We endured another bout of choppy sea on the way in making me feel worse than I did on the way out! Nonetheless, the trip was great. Jonny loved the diving and he gained his PADI - congratulations!! I liked the snorkeling in the end but not the deep water. And I loved sunbathing on the boat! Was amazing to see the Great Barrier Reef - something that both of us really wanted to see.

We had a long wait until our overnight bus was due to depart. We grabbed some dinner, lazed by the lagoon and collected our luggage from our hotel. We were happy when the bus arrived as we just wanted somewhere to sleep. The bus was good but I couldn't really sleep but Jonny fell asleep straight away! Hilariously, Jonny had a bad dream about being trapped under some logs which made him shout 'help, help help' while he was asleep! I grabbed his arms as he was waving them about and woke him up. But he managed to petrify and shock the guy in front of him who started screaming and screaming!! His friend had to calm him down. Jonny said sorry and immediately went back to sleep. I couldn't stop laughing!!

We have spent a few days in Airlie Beach relaxing by the Lagoon and hope to go out to the Whitsundays in a couple of days but Jonny is unfortunately ill at the moment.

Hope everyone is well. Take care,

Love Kirsty and Jonny xxx