Well, Kel left very early this morning for the first flight of a mammoth 33 hour journey home - rather her than us! We've enjoyed all the adventures we've had together in the last 3 weeks - we've definitely kept her busy!

Anyway, we've still got four months of travelling to do, beginning with celebrating Australia Day today! It's a public holiday here so everyone gets together for BBQs, drinks and sunshine!

In the morning, we headed down to the Esplanade by the lagoon where there were lots of families with their picnics and BBQs! We hung around for a while, waiting for the promised thong-throwing (as in flip-flop) competition that was meant to start at midday, but nothing happened! After a while, we decided to give us waiting in the heat and go in search of air-con and a cold drink! We picked up a snag from the BBQ for a dollar and headed to a nearby pub for a jug of cold beer! After a stop in another (Irish) pub, we headed back to the hostel for a nap!
Laura was asleep and I was just nodding off when we were awoken by a massive bang from outside. We weren't really sure what was happening until John, an Irish guy staying in our dorm said 'I think someone's just fallen off the roof!' We all rushed out to the balcony, looked over and saw a girl lying sprawled on the metal roof below our balcony. She'd fallen two storeys and was clearly injured, but we could see she was breathing. Two security guys arrived and tried to put a pillow under her head (we all shouted at them not to move her) before asking a policeman below if he had a first aid kit! Err…she's just fallen off the balcony, a plaster probably won't do much good! Thankfully, the paramedics arrived quickly and stretchered her off to hospital. A dramatic start to our Australia Day night out! We heard a few different things about her injuries later but we think she escaped with a few broken bones - lucky girl!

Our night did get better after that - in the bar we met Paddy, Cieran and Corey from our Whitsundays trip and had a few drinks with them in Gilligan's and the Courthouse Hotel. They were getting up early the next day for a dive trip and a trip to the zoo for Cieran, so we left them there and headed back to Gilligan's to continue the party!

We eventually got to bed at about 2am after an action-packed Australia Day!