Well, I've travelled over 3000km since last talking to you all, so had a pretty busy fortnight. We left Townsville for Cairns a fortnight ago, although we weren't all that impressed really. We met with a couple of the lads from our sailing trip, which was good. The best thing we did from Cairns was go on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which is an hours journey through beautiful forests, and up some mountain which overlooks Cairns. It also passes past Stoney Creek Falls, a waterfall, which literally falls beside the train. Got some lovely pictures. The train also stops at Barron Falls, and you can get out to take some pictures. It's massive, and cascades down into loads of falls, it was lush. Kuranda itself is a touristy type village, which has a koala centre, where you can hold them. Me and Nads couldn't get there quick enough. We went up to the bit where you hold the koala's, and I was like, right, show me your koala's, I wanna hold the biggest, juiciest one! They had exactly what I was looking for...a huge koala (more a bear than a koala) called Frank. It was amazing, you have to position your hands to be able to hold his bum, and then he wraps his cuddly arms around you and you get your picture taken. I loved it, he was brill. From Cairns we were heading to Port Douglas, and decided to go inland through a town called Meraba, where they grow Australia's coffee, but it was all a bit freaky there, so we moved swiftly on and headed to Port Douglas. The camp site there was terrible though, and so we drove around trying to find another one, but couldn't, and then went for a drive around, and decided that we didn't actually like it all that much, and so moved on, heading back down the coast ready for our trip inland. We hadn't quite taken into consideration just how big the drives are here though, and so after 8 hours of continual driving (on our round the world trip from Cairns to Port Douglas then back down) we decided we needed to head back to Townsville to stay with Pat and Gina, as it was pitch black so we couldn't of put the tent up or anything. So we basically just rocked up at their place and hoped they'd have us, which they did, so all was good. From there we ventured on our 2464 km trek to Darwin. Once you get in the outback the towns are all pretty far apart form each other, so we made a plan beforehand on where we'd stop each day. Our first drive was to Charters Towers, only an hour and a half from Townsville, so it was a nice small drive. Fortunately we stayed in Townsville with Pat and Gina til early afternoon, cos Charters was full of complete fruitloops, and we couldn't wait to leave! As soon as we left there though we discovered the petrol gage was stuck on full, which isn't exactly what you need when you only have petrol stations 300k apart from each other. Even funnier is that we never know how far we've gone, cos on the second day of our road trip the milometer decided to stop working. We have managed to get the windscreen wiper fixed though. That flew off on the motorway once, when it was teaming down. All dead funny!!! The next days drive was our biggest, to Mount Isa, a 9 hour drive, and it nearly killed us. And then once we got to the camp site we discovered that the evenings where like at the Blue Mountains-bloody freezing, so we hardly slept, cos we've not really got the clothes for the cold weather. We also have a single duvet now, and not the queen sized one that we had before we washed it! Oooops! We stayed 2 nights at Mount Isa to recover from our 9 hour drive, and went to the underground hospital. That was quite interesting. It was a Sunday though, and everything else was closed. So we decided to go to the pictures, and went to see Mission Impossible 3. The next morning we were just about to set off on an 8 hour drive, when Nads locked the keys in the car!!! I can't say that that's the first time that's happened to me, and it always seems to happen when I'm camping (weird), but with a spanner and wire coat hanger, off I went to work trying to break into it. There were all these Hicksville men crowding round trying to help, but they were all pretty useless. I just don't think they liked the thought of me being able to get into it. It turned out that the car handles and buttons are not designed for you to grip your coat hanger round them (how rude), but I sussed that pretty quick and left the Hicksville men to it while I took Nads round to the passenger side to help me hold open the top of the door sufficiently enough for me to pull the keys through. She'd left them on the passengers seat, so me being the genius I am, I hooked them onto the coat hanger, and pulled them through the door-while the men where the other side of the car not even realising I'd recovered them! One nil to me! From there we headed off again to Threeways, which is literally a town consisting of a petrol station, with a pub, and a campsite behind it. That's it, and there's nothing around for miles. The outback is dead funny. We got chatting with the guy working behind the bar though, some old guy called Mozzie. We showed up asking what was included in happy hour, and he was like, happy hour doesn't start for another half hour. We'd lost half hour just by crossing from Queensland to the Northern Territory. Haha He told us that the Devil's Marbles were only 100k from where we were, so we decided to go there the following day. They were fab, massive round bolder in the middle of knowhere! And from there headed to a famous outback pub in Daly Waters, where we had Beef & Barra (Barramundi) for tea, with some crazy man singing these bonkers songs that he'd made up. It's normal for the outback it seems! We then went to Katherine, stopping the night, and the next morning had a free tour of Katherine gorge (really beautiful) compliments of work, and from there we had the last leg of our journey to Darwin. The outback was great, absolutely huge, and we saw and experienced some really cool things along the way. We had a giggle when we both discovered that we expected it to be a red desert, when infact there is grass and trees everywhere. We then realised that it was cos we were in the bush, doh! As always I've been up to all kinds since being in Darwin, enough to put in a journal of its own, so I'll do that now. Love Lauz.