We headed to Cairns on Tuesday 16th August. After a delayed plane, we eventually got to the hostel at 11.30pm and discovered there would be no wifi there. The next day I went for a walk on the esplanade and then went out for a Korean meal, and I tried a meal I had never had in Korea - Kimchi Kalguksu. In the evening I attended Reef Teach, a talk about what we would find on the reef and how to identify them. It was very interesting and I learned great things like - corals are named after what they look like e.g. finger corals, lettuce corals, stag corals, brain corals and plate corals. I learned about fish species such as the wrasse that cleans other fishes (and amazingly there seems to be an underwater rule in which predators agree not to eat any fish in the process of being cleaned!). I learned about the fire coral that, if you touch it, will not only cause you pain now, but every time water touches your body for 6 weeks after! I discovered that corals are actually upside down jellyfish, and that turtles like to be rubbed on their shell like a dog likes to be stroked.

Thursday was the big day - our visit to the Great Barrier Reef. We were very excited. We went out on a boat called Evolution and rented an underwater camera. The first reef we went to was called Norman Reef, right on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef. This position, along with the bad weather and the choppy seas ruined the experience because it meant very strong currents which I couldn't swim against. I ended up barely getting two metres from the boat except when one of the crew helped to drag me out for a few minutes. However, by the time we finished on that reef, I had got a few photos and was more used to how to swim with the flippers so it was much better when we got to the second reef - Hastings Reef (noticing a 1066 theme there?). Hastings reef was further in so it was calmer and I was able to get much better views of the fish. There were more fish and corals around which helped make up for the disappointment of the first reef. I managed to see some very beautiful fish including yellow damsel-fish and the brightly coloured parrot-fish. Unfortunately I didn't see any turtles or sharks. Overall, it was a good experience but I definitely preferred the snorkelling in Thailand where there were a lot more fish to see.

The following day, I went to Kuranda, a village in the rainforest. The day started with a 7.5km ride in a cable car over the rainforest canopy, stopping at the Barron falls to view them. Then it was off to the Rainforestation centre, where I had a trip in an army duck vehicle (a land and water based vehicle), while learning about rainforest plants and seeing lizards, sunbathing turtles and huge butterflies. That was followed by a visit to a wildlife centre where I saw a Cassowary, Tasmanian Devil, Crocodiles, cute Dingo puppy's and Koala's. I also got to feed and pet Kangaroos and Wallabies. After that was a visit to the aboriginal training centre where they demonstrated spear and didgeridoo playing, before allowing us to have a go at throwing a boomerang. We also witnessed a performance featuring traditional aboriginal dances and music (though I'm not totally convinced it was genuine). Finally I finished the day with a two hour train trip back to Cairns on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, one of the most scenic in the world and an engineering masterpiece. It was a really good day.

The final thing I did in Cairns was a day trip to the Atherton Tablelands. This is basically an area on top of a range of mountains that was once covered in rainforest, but is now mostly farmland. However there are still some good pockets of rainforest which we got to see. First we went to see the Cathedral Fig Tree which was a massive tree that inspired the ones in the Avatar movie. It was actually mostly roots of a seed that had landed on another host tree and slowly choked the life out of it, replacing it with itself. After that we went to see two lakes which were in the remains of volcano craters. I walked through the rainforest around one lake (Lake Eacham), saw some turtles and large birds, and then had lunch. Unfortunately I didn't have time to swim in the lake like some of the others as I took too long wandering in the rainforest. Oops! Afterwards we went to two waterfalls. The first, Millaa Millaa (which means "a lot of water" in the local aboriginal language), was massive, and the second, Dinner Falls, had a cave behind it. Unfortunately it rained all day which made it less fun and I couldn't get any decent photo's. It was still a beautiful area though.

On Tuesday 23rd, I was up at 4am to fly to my final destination in Australia - Sydney. David was also heading back to England that day, so I was feeling sad. Arriving in the city before midday, I managed to visit Circular Quay and see the Sydney Opera House, Harbour and Harbour Bridge, as well as the Botanical Gardens. I also had a chance to do a tour of the Opera House so I could see inside and learn all about it. I learned about how it was designed by a Dutchman, that the top was inspired by sails, while the base was inspired by Mayan temples in Mexico.

The following day I visited Darling Harbour and the Maritime Museum. This was one of the highlights of Sydney for me because I got to go aboard a Navy Destroyer Ship (named Vampire), a submarine (named Onslow) and a full size replica of the Endeavour, a ship used by Captain Cook in 1770 to first scout out and claim the east coast of Australia. Afterwards I went to the largest Imax cinema in the world and watched the film Suicide Squad. One interesting story I learned on the Endeavour ship was the a member of Captain Cook's crew shot a Kangaroo when he first landed. When they asked the Aborigines what it was called, they said "kangaroo" but what that actually meant in their language was "we don't understand what you're saying." LOL.

In Melbourne I had done a great walking Tour so I decided to spend a day doing two of them in Sydney. The first was around the city of Sydney, where I learned about the architecture, history and stories of the city. I visited Sydney's Hyde Park, Customs House and a hospital called "rum hospital" after the then governor who wanting it built, gave three companies exclusive rights to supply rum in the city as long as they financed the building of the hospital too. I also saw a cool art exhibit called "disappearing songs" which consisted of 50 empty bird cages above the street with the songs of birds that would have been there if Sydney hadn't been built. The second tour was in "the Rocks", the area where the convicts first lived in Sydney and I learned about it's history of gangs, old pubs and military outposts. In the area is the Australian Hotel, which lost a bet in 2009 with Richard Branson over who would win the ashes. Because Australia lost, the hotel was renamed "the Brit" for two weeks and had to stock British drinks, food and flags instead!

The next day I visited "the Rocks" area again after a disappointing and unsuccessful attempt at whale watching. In the Rocks, I went to the discovery museum to learn about the history of the area and then to a group of houses built in 1844 called Susannah Place, where I learned about how people lived in them. One interesting thing that stood out was how they had an outside metal tin they filled with water and heated up underneath in order to get hot water for baths and washing clothes. It also had a cute little shop set up like 1914, with golden shred marmelade which I haven't seen around for ages. I went to the observatory to have a look around and saw sunset over the harbour, and then returned later that evening for a night tour. However, I was very angry when they didn't include the Planetarium part that I had specifically said was the reason I wanted to do the tour when I paid for it. I did get to see Jupiter and four of it's moons though which was cool.

Another highlight of Sydney was my tour to the Blue Mountains. They are called that because when you look at them, there is a blue haze given off by eucalyptus oils being released from the trees. I went to Wentworth falls which was a beautiful walk and Charles Darwin himself also lived there at one point in his life. I had lunch at the Megalon Valley and then went for a walk down some very steep cliffs to see the Three Sisters rock formation and learn the aboriginal story about them. To get back up, I took the world's steepest railway, which feels like a fairground ride and scared me a lot. I also learned about different trees and plants such as Australia's national flower, the yellow wattle, which was in bloom, as well as Tea Tree and Eucalyptus trees.

Finally I ended my trip to Sydney with a second attempt at Whale Watching. This turned out to be amazing. I saw three humpback whales and two of them stayed next to the boat the entire time, playing, diving and snorting water. They were an awesome sight to see and the captain of the ship said that he was speechless on the way back, as he hadn't seen anything like it in four years of doing the tours. It more than made up for the earlier disappointment. I went to Hyde Park barracks in the afternoon to learn about the lives of the convicts who first came to and formed Sydney, and the immigrants who came later. And then it was time to fly to my final destination on this trip - New Zealand.