Wow! Queensland has been amazing the only thing which let us down a little was the weather but even then we don't mean rain but just a few clouds! We flew into Cairns (as that seems to be the only way to travel here) and booked oursleves straight onto a liveaboard (living on board a boat) scuba diving trip over the great barrier reef! It was really good even though the visibility down there wasn't the best due to the wind making things a little choppy. We were swimming with huge turtles, white tip sharks, giant moray eels, nemo's and stingrays, obviously the coral was amazing oh and we saw some huge clams! (We have a seperate diving photo album online as we hired an underwater camera).
Next we hired yet another campervan (the alternative way to travel on our budget) and made our way north to Cape Tribulation & Daintree Rainforest where we saw a fight between a dog and a monitor lizard, awesome, the dog took a swipe on the nose and blood was drawn! The thing is its a $300 fine to bring a pet in the reserve so nobody owned up for the dog so the fight went on for a while!
Then we headed south down the east coast to townsville which is a nice modern city with very hospitable people who invited us in for a free BBQ under the impression we were guests in the hostel....we didn't tell them otherwise :) Basically to save money me and Laura obviously sleep in the campervan BUT we sneak into hostels daily to cook our food and have showers at no cost...shhhh! This is the non-glamourous life of a backpacker you don't see in the brochures!
Anyways going south we stopped off in a Billabong sanctuary where we got to hold and see koalas, wombats, lizards, snakes and more crocs and kangaroos! Then we continued south to Airlie Beach which is not only a buzzing little town but the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. We went on a day trip around the islands and stopped off on Whitehaven beach which is voted number 3 in the world...a little fact...the sand from this beach is so fine that NASA bought 5tonnes of the stuff to build their lenses for the hubble telescope! Anyway we went snorkling off the coast and swam with another giant turtle! Laura seemed to freak out a lil due to being so close to the coral as the water was so shallow.
Our next plan was Fraser Island but we were hit with freak thunderstorms and the idea was postponed and we made our way to Noosa Heads to watch the surfers and exploit another hostel. However the weather didn't get any better so we made our way back to Brisbane a day early to wander around the city, museums, shops etc