That night we stayed in a free beach campsite that had showers, bit of a treat for us after staying in the desert for so long. We celebrated being back in civilisation with style, curry and pasta and a box of goon! The folowing morning we cooked breakfast then started our journey to our next stop, Mission Beach.

On the way we saw a sign for Paluma Range National Park and Jourama Waterfalls. We decided to take a bit of a detour as we had time and it was such a gorgeous day it would be nice to do some walking. We parked up in the car aprk and walked to the top. There were signs saying only 200 meters to go but it felt like a lot more! The view when we arrived at the top was stunning and we even decided to go for a swim in the lagoon below the falls. Scott was enjoying a nice swim in the lagoon below us but all the fun stopped when Matt saw a MASSIVE spider in a web on one of the roack. Gem has never moved so fast! We couldn´t get a picture as it was hangin beneath a rock and even Matt wasn´t going to go back in once he knew it was there!

After quite a long drive we made it to Mission Beach. By now we had a leaflet from one of the many tourist offices that we visit and Scott was excited to see if we could camp at "Scotts Place". Unfortunately they didn´t allow campers so we ended up staying in the nearby Caravan Park. It was very nice with hot showers and prime position right on the beach. We had to watch out for the Cassowaries as we drove round the town, on speaking to the locals we found out that they have been known to write off cars so we kept our eye out.

We had a lovely evening drinking wine on the beach, Scotts chair finally gave way which made for a funny picture! We met some great people that night too, one who deals with the cane toad problem in his garden by hopping on his lawn mower! Gem cooked another fantastic dinner then it was time for bed, Cairns awaiting us the following morning!

We made it to Cairns with quite a lot of time to spare so we enjoyed a picnic by the local public pool and visited a few tour agencies regarding doing a snorkelling trip on the barrier reef. As with everything in Oz the tours are very expensive. We therefore opted for the low budget option of visiting the inner barrier reef but we were promised we would still see lots.

The next day we got up early and made our way to the port. On finding our boat we discovered that we had been upgraded and we would be on a better boat and doing a trip to the outer barrier reef - fab news!

The trip was amazing, we were on the boat for a good 2 hours before we stopped and put on our flippers. There was quite a long safety briefing on the way out and we knew where we were allowed to go and what not to do etc. Gem was a bit scared at the beginning as we really were in the middle of nowhere, no land in site. As soon as we got out onto the reef the marine life was amazing. Big corals full of very colourful fish. We went out to 2 different spots- Hastings Reef and Saxons Reef and we must have snorkelled for over an hour at each. We hired an underwater digital camera for the day too so there are some underwater photos for all to see. At the second spot we swam with a turtle, it was truly fantastic! We saw nemo again and lots of parrot fish. Scott reckons he saw a reef shark but didn´t get a picture so we´re not sure on that one! We were all quite tired after all the swimming around and excitement. We treated ourselves to a beer on the boat ride back!