4/10/9 Back to Cairns (Sunday)

We had a 5.45 am wake up knock at the door and Phil went off to do a sunrise dive. Liz stayed in bed for alittle while longer and then packed the bags and sorted out the bed laundry as we needed to clear the room soon after breakfast. Phils dive had poorer visibility but he still saw a white tipped reef shark. He and his buddy surfaced 100m away from the boat and then had a rope tow back to the Kangaroo Explorer from the tender that rowed out to meet them. Apparently Phil's 18 year old buddy who had a whole 5 months experience was "a navigation expert"!!! Phil said he couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag. We all had breakfast then it was back into the water. Phil had a good dive with one of the crew who was Swedish. The boat then relocated to Milln Reef home of the Whale Bombie, so called because it sticks out of the water and resembles a whale to passing boats. It is a large bombie with a big coral wall beyond to explore. Phil had to do a boat dive, diving fronm a tender then drift diving with the current back to the bigger boat. The crew buddied him with a Dutch girl who had qualified only one hour before. He said she was a better diver than the Israeli "expert". They went out and dived to 15 meters and the girl said she felt very safe with Phil. The coral was very colourful and they saw a turtle and loads of different fish. Liz had a quick snorkel here too and got out to make sure we got some lunch. The ships captain had taken over cooking and we had a huge pile of nachos, pasta and salads. After lunch we went out snorkelling together and took some photos under the water. After our snorkel we dried off and boarded the Sunkist again for a two hour return ride to Cairns. It was really overcast and grey but still very warm. A small boat had broken down in the middle of the shipping lane into Cairns marina and we watched while a helpful boat towed him out of dangers way. Back in Cairns we went back to the hostel via the dive shop to collect Phils certificates. We got showered then popped into town on the free bus and wandered around the night market and had a chinese meal but we were pretty shattered so went back to sleep.

5/10/09 Cairns Monday

We woke up and had a few jobs to do on our last day in Australia so we popped into the post office to get some packing materials then went back to the hostel to package up some things to post home. We returned to the post office to send the things then went to a few camera shops to try and get our discs burned to DVD. As we have no way ofg checking them without the camera software which is the UK we decided it was better to get new discs rather than risk losing all our videos so far. We downloaded Phils photos to DVD then had a quick burger for lunch. We were going to see an Aboriginal show but decided it was really too expensive and we had very little time so went to the internet cafe for a while then on to the Woolshed for dinner. Phil didn't feel too good with a headache so we returned to the hostel where he had a sleep for an hour while Liz packed. Phil felt better once he had woken up and packed his bags then we went to sort out some laundry and use the internet. While there we caught up with Colin so were able to say our goodbyes to him. We weren't too long before we went to bed.