Hi all

This is our final blog for Australia as we head to Asia tomorrow for our final 4 weeks of our adventure! Time has flown by so quickly and any moments of home sicknesses have been eased by all your regular messages and updates; thank you.

After sailing around the Great Barrier Reef we collected a hire car and drove all the way up the coast to Townsville, stopping along the way in places such as Mission Beach. This tiny little place is made famous by its long stretch of beach, lined with rainforest, but it was very hot here so after a quick refuel for lunch we carried on up the coast. It is stinger season here (jelly fish) and most beaches have nets to allow swimmers to bathe in protected areas. But the smaller jelly fish have managed to slip through the nets causing huge serge in stings, leaving many people (mostly young children) in hospital fighting for their lives. We decided after hearing all the warnings on local radio that we'd done quite enough swimming in Australia and won't be venturing in the sea again! Especially since we now learn that up here in the tropics there is another predator now lurking in the waves….crocodiles!

Anyway, back to our journey…we drove onto Townsville, a small city on the coast. Here we had a strange experience. The building where we were staying was built in the 1880s as a supposed church, but was actually a secret alcohol shop for the locals. We were in our room late at night; we'd switched off all lights about 15 minutes before and were just chatting as we fell to sleep. When suddenly Adam's lamp came on, bright and beaming all by itself. We were very spooked! There was no storm in which to explain the event, nor any room the other side of the wall. I'll leave it to you to decide what it was!

The following day we went on a day trip to the beautiful Magnetic Island, which is a quiet holiday resort with tropical plants and beautiful beaches. We left Townsville the next morning and drove all the way to Port Douglas, north of Cairns. Port Douglas is a beautiful village set in acres of rainforest alongside Four Mile Beach. In the evening we joined the other hostel guests for a BBQ and then four of us went to the beach to watch the huge storm that was happening over the sea. The huge flashes of lightning were illuminating the beach for a split second, which was very impressive. Lots of people were watching the storm on the beach, but all were quite far back from the sea and we didn't know why, until the aussie we were with reminded us of the crocodiles! Hmmm!

From Port Douglas we drove up to Daintree Village, the most northern point that can be reached by road. It is quite strange as it is completely engulfed in the rainforest and as such the insects in the toilets (who gathered to scare Adam) were of giant and alien proportions.

Then we headed back south to Cairns, it's a strange city and is off peak season here as it is the wet season. This morning we went on the sky rail (gondolas) over the rainforest into the tourist village of Karoundra. It is a very spectacular journey in which you hang precariously 40 foot over deep jungle.

And now we're off to Singapore, followed by Kuala Lumpur and hopefully Thailand for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you all (it still feels like August to us!)

Lots of love

Mair and Adam xxx