Well...after finally finishing our 3 month stint at work in Sydney(woohoo!), we excitedley headed to the airport to fly to Darwin. We arrived at our hostel at about 2am and were up bright, well maybe not bright, but early at 5.30am to catch our bus for our 4 day outback safari to Cairns. So...day one we set off in our bright orange fun bus. This was a 4 wheel drive with all the mod-cons, including camera on the bonet, dvd and cd player to listen to LOTs of very cheesey music. We have seen a vast amount of land and taken a lot of photos of nothing. Do you know that one person's cattle ranch we drove through was the size of Belgium! First stop took us to the home of Charlie the Buffallo (Indiana Jones!?) anyway we were supposed to be impressed with the real life size carcus stuffed on the bar side. The trouble was we had crazy distances to travel everyday over 900km/9-12 hrs per day. This meant all stops were quite short but well worth it. For lunch we stopped for a dip in a natural hot spring (as you do) and started to get to know our travel companions. Next stop was Daly Waters pub which is the most remote pub in Australia....yes it was! Very tired we arrived at Cape Crawford after a very big detour due to the flooding left over from the cyclones. No rest for the wicked so after a bit of star gazing (amazing) we joined the "locals", miners and cowboys from miles around, for a few games including neck tug-of-war with leather belts, and good old cards. We won naturally! Onwards and onwards our adventure took us to Adels Grove via humongous empty landscapes where we got to see the sunrise and sunset with cute little kangaroos jumping in and out of view amongst the termite mounds, and giant eagles swooping around us overhead. A few bush education dvds and a few stops for the bush loo later, we arrived at the camp site where the showers are operated by a log fire contraption and the generator is turned off at 10pm. Thank goodness Mark, our tour guide, had built us a nice big bonfire, and we were so glad that someone had brought marshmallows to toast-Mmm! Braving the creepy crawleys we set off bright and early again to Lawn Hill Gorge which had to be the highlight of both our trips. We shared a 3 man canoe with Kirsten, an American girl on our bus and rowed through the most stunning red rock formation, you wait til you see the photos! On the other side of the gorge were a series of rapids and waterfalls that you could actually go inside of, plus the water was warm. After this we didn't mind the long, long stretch through more bush and desert to Croydon because we had plenty of not so educational DVDs to entertain us, plus games of cards in the back of the bus, plus of course catching up on the necessary sleep lost when getting up everyday at 5am! Croydon offered not a lot (it has a population of 50 so what did we expect) except its pub which of course was where we and pretty much all 50 locals were to be found. One, rather drunk cowboy entertained us with, among other things, stories of what he has seen when out on horseback rounding up the cattle. Apparently, he once witnessed a wallabie take its joey out of her pouch to feed and and then an eagle swoop down and snatch that joey with the mum raising her paws abover her head to get the baby back! There are some things you really have to get off the beaten track to see but we have come to the conclusion that come what may we can't see everything (boo). Our final day took us to Cairns, land of the crocodiles. Apparently because the city is built on mud flats (their natural habitat for thousands of years) they can be found wandering the city streets. Believe us these crocodiles aren't nice either, they have taken 4 lives already this year! You will be thankful, we're sure to know that we made it out of Cairns all limbs intact and even had a play with some deadly snakes in the bargain. We went to a snake place on the way from Croydon to Cairns where we held carpet pythons and met the most deadly snake in the world, yeah, we're still not overly keen! Our tour ended, naturally back in the pub, well a bar actually called the Woolshed where we all said our farewells over beer and dancing (why we don't know, neither of us even like beer!) A good night nonetheless was had by all. Thanks to all those from our tour who had fun with us, we had a great time and miss you all xx