22/12/08 As we travelled the coastal main road from Townsville to Cairns the next day, the landscape became absolutely spectacular! As we drove we passed several mountainous National Parks, and in some places the road was only separated from the mountains by fields of sugar cane and another crop I didn't recognise. The mountains and the land between them were covered in rainforest, the peaks were cloaked in clouds, and it all just looked so beautiful, I was constantly taking photos as we drove along. You could certainly tell that we were in Tropical North Queensland! At one point we stopped at a lookout point, and as we approached it we saw a cassowary warning sign! There are only two types of cassowary (a colourful flightless bird as tall as a man, with a 'helmet' and very sharp claws) - one is unique to Tropical North Queensland, and the other is unique to Papua New Guinea. We didn't spot any, though. We stopped a couple of other times as well. I like the way that in car, we can stop wherever we like, when we like, whilst if we'd been travelling by Greyhound bus we wouldn't be able to do this! The first time we stopped, it was at a swimming hole at 'Five Mile Creek', in which we had a nice refreshing dip. The second time we stopped it was at a town hugged by the rainforest, with an empty beach and amazing views out to sea, with some of the tropical rainforested islands in sight. I walked out onto the pier and took some photos, and I would have liked us to have stopped properly and swum in the sea, but obviously we couldn't due to the box jellyfish threat. We arrived in Cairns and set up camp at a campsite near the edge of the city, meaning to look around at backpacker hostels and see if any of them did working for free accommodation, the next day.

23/12/08 In the morning we went round loads of hostels and asked, but even when they said they did offer working for free accommodation, they said they already had enough people doing it. We were getting really frustrated, but then we had a stroke of luck; one place that I asked said they didn't need anyone else, but rang another hostel for us which they said would need people! The lady did ring this other hostel, and it turned out they did need people, urgently, so we drove straight there and signed ourselves up! It was a great relief, having finally found what we wanted after so much frustration, so after we'd moved our stuff into our room, we spent a nice relaxing time in the pool (which is the best we've yet encountered after the one in our campsite in Jabiru, Kakadu) and then drove into town for a look around. We stocked up on a bit of food, including the kangeroo steaks we'd decided to have in the evening of Christmas Day, and poked around in a couple of other shops. One of them was a new and secondhand bookshop, and we both bought a book, counting them as Christmas presents for ourselves. On the way back to the car, we popped into the Red Ochre Grill to make a reservation for Christmas Day lunchtime, but it turned out they were closed then, so we booked in for Christmas Eve instead.

24/12/08 The morning was taken up with work (Dave was cleaning the bathrooms/toilets/showers etc., and I was making beds), but after that we had a quick dip in the pool and then got ready for our meal at the Red Ochre Grill. We went for the Game Platter, which had emu steak with chopped mushrooms, kangeroo steak, little crocodile strips in breadcrumbs, sweet potato fritters, and a cooked lettucy type of vegetable which I've forgotten the name of. The kangeroo was very juicy and a bit rare, just how it should be cooked, and the emu was lovely too - a lot like juicy beef steak in colour and texture, and the taste was a bit similar as well, very meaty. The crocodile was nice too, but you couldn't really tell what the meat itself tasted like because the breadcrumbs had quite a strong sauce on it. As a starter we had had some wattleseed damper with peanut oil and dukka seeds - a dense sort of bread, very tasty - and as a side we had some Asian vegetables with mirin. For pudding, we had wattleseed pavlova! It was delicious, as you would expect, and came with some Davidson plum sorbet, a lychee stuck onto a cut up strawberry, and some lychee sauce. Feeling nicely full, we strolled down to the lagoon and stayed in there for a while. It was 33 degrees and there was barely a cloud in the sky, so it felt strange to think that it was actually Christmas Eve! The lagoon is a large shallowish outdoors swimming pool, with white sand in the paddling part and by the side. It looks out over the beach, which is a bit muddy so not really suitable for swimming. We went into the shopping centre after this, to get some chocolate for the next day (for it wouldn't really feel like Christmas without chocolate, would it?), but disaster struck when the ATM swallowed Dave's card! I went to the customer services desk, but they told me there was nothing they could do about it because the machine doesn't belong to them. Horrorstruck, we hung around the machine to prevent someone nicking it if by any chance the card spontaneously came out, but then Dave asked the customer services if it was likely to spontaneously appear and they said it was practically impossible, plus the shopping centre started closing down for the day, so we walked home. On the way back we remembered about the 24 hour international helpline number written on my card, so when we got back Dave rang it and cancelled his card, and got them to send a new one. Relieved that we had done what we could, we had the free meal we get every day (spag bol today) and then got an early night.

25/12/08 It was a shame that we had to work on Christmas Day, but as soon as we had finished we put the kangeroo steaks and the rolls and drinks in the car and set off to the lagoon! Dave had decided he'd like an Australian Akubra hat for Christmas, but that we'd get it after Christmas in the sales, and we'd already got our books and my Aboriginal art, so there wasn't any present giving in the morning. The BBQs are on the Esplanade right next to the lagoon, which we got into after we'd eaten our steaks and rolls! The temperature had gone up to 35 degrees, and the sky was still cloudless, so we both got a bit sunburnt. One of the lifeguards was wearing a Santa hat. It still felt very surreal - more like a summer holiday with some Christmas decorations and songs thrown in, than Christmas. We stayed in the lagoon for quite a long time, before going into 24 hour supermarket and getting the chocolate we hadn't been able to get the day before. When we got home I put the chocolate in the fridge for later, and we read our new books for a while before making dinner. For the main part we just had tinned tomatoes, tuna and sweetcorn mixed together, with mashed potato, but for pudding we a Christmas pudding we'd bought on the 23rd, with vanilla custard! We carried on reading after that, and ate our chocolate, before going to sleep. I got up at 5 am to ring all of you at home, getting back into bed afterwards.

26-30/12/08 These days were spent catching up with emails and with this blog, and working for accommodation still in the mornings. There was a lot to catch up on so this took a lot of time!

31/12/08 New Year's Eve! We had to work as usual in the morning. I had intended on visiting the lagoon in the afternoon, or a beach north of Cairns, but the weather didn't play along - it rained nearly all day! We went into town for a while anyway, and when we got back we read until dinner. We get free upgraded evening meals due to being staff, and that day it was a special due to it being New Year's Eve - unlimited pizza and pasta, and white sauce and bolognese sauce! We played some pool as well, which is also free, and then I went back to the room and showered/washed my hair. Then, we went into town to buy something alcoholic to have with our Pepsi. The town was absolutely packed, as you'd expect, and it was nearly impossible to find anywhere to park, but we managed to in the end. While we were looking round town we saw fireworks go off - it was only 9pm, so it wasn't the official display yet. When we got back to the hostel we relaxed for a while and had a couple of drinks, and then I got changed and we went back into town. The crowds on the Esplanade were massive (there had been a concert going on.) At a couple of minutes to midnight a guy announced on loudspeaker that we were all going to practice doing the countdown; but the people doing the fireworks must have assumed it was for real, because the fireworks started going off! They were so fantastic, though, I doubt anyone minded them having been let off a minute too early. It had stopped raining by the time we got into town the second time, which was good timing. After the fireworks ended we had a snack and then went home.

1-2/1/09 We organised a trip to the Great Barrier Reef - we had intended just to snorkel, but we managed to get quite a good deal where we got an introductory dive as well for not much more, so we went with that instead. We also hired an underwater camera! At Koh Tao I'd wished we'd been able to take photos underwater, so we couldn't let the opportunity pass by here in Cairns!