G'day folks

Sorry for the delay in updating. We are both still alive.

After Magnetic Island we went to Airlie Beach to embark on our sailing trip of the Whitsundays. Our boat, Spank Me, was due to leave the day after we arrived. However, a big mix-up ensued with Jo being booked on the boat without me. This also happened to our Scottish friends - only one of them was booked on. There was only one way to resolve the situation - flipping a coin. I went with my trustworthy 'tails never fails' call and it failed. Therefore we had to get the next available boat which was the day after. Buggar.

We boarded Freight Train early the next morning and spent the day sailing calm waters to Whitehaven beach. This beach is apparently the fourth most photographed spot in Australia. I don't know how anyone worked that out, but that's what we were told. We had a potter along the beach and a dip in the sea before an awesome motorised dingy ride back to the main boat. Our bed in the boat was small to say the least and we had a pretty poor night's sleep.

The next day shall be remembered for the not so calm water. We spent over five hours sailing through very choppy water and let's just say Jo didn't enjoy it too much and I quote "I'm never going on a boat again." The crew kept changing their mind on where to go and we ended up in a spot that was crap for diving (but the certified divers went anyway) and the snorkelling was pretty poor too. Another bad night's sleep followed.

On the final day we had much better sea conditions. We got to do an introductory dive with two other people. Up in Cairns we felt very safe when we went diving. It was only the two of us with the dive instructor, so he held our hand and checked we were ok regularly. However, this time since there were more of us we couldn't really do this, and our instructor sort of swam off with the other two, leaving us worried. I tried to swim after him to get his attention but when I turned round Jo was gone. Fortunately she swam to the surface, worked out how to inflate her scuba jacket and was saved/rescued/helped by a snorkelling Dane.

After the dive I did some snorkelling and took the underwater photos you can see in one of our albums.

We were relieved to return to Airlie Beach that afternoon. As you can probably tell we didn't have the best of times on our sailing trip. It was one of those things that everyone said was incredible but we were thoroughly disappointed. We're obviously not the sailing types!

Two days later we headed to Kroombit, a cattle station in the outback. Here we did the mechanical bull rodeo, learnt to crack a whip, went mustering (rounding up goats into a pen while on horseback), goat lassoing, goat branding and clay pigeon shooting. Needless to say we had a wicked time; it was so different from what we'd been doing on the coast and the staff there were great characters.

After this we headed to Hervey Bay to do our 3 day 4-wheel-drive tour of Fraser Island. Fraser Island is entirely made of sand. Alledgedly there is more sand on Fraser Island than in the Sahara Desert. Again, I'm not sure who has counted the grains, but I'd like to know how someone came up with a stat like that.

We had a brilliant time driving along the beach and the inland tracks. We got to swim in lakes and creeks but not the sea - the rip is too dangerous and it's full of sharks. The camping was met with mixed reactions - I think the girls didn't like not being able to shower for a few days, whereas the boys embraced the dirt.

Our next stop was Brisbane. We had an anxious evening trying to sort out accommodation as we were told we would only be able to stay for one night. However, in the morning the hostel said it was fine to extend our stay for a couple more nights. Why they couldn't have told us that the night before I don't know.

On our first full day we sorted out the rest of our stops on the OZ Bus. Then we thought we'd walk to The Gabba, the Brisbane cricket ground, to see what was going on. On the way there we managed to see quite a lot of the city since it was a 45 minute walk. We walked past the lagoon with a big screen but thought we'd continue to the ground just in case we could get some tickets.

We were approached by a tout as soon as we got to the ground at lunchtime. We bought 2 tickets for $35 each (face value) and had great seats in the shade, 3 rows from the front. Shame about the cricket though. It was ok for a while - we saw Hoggard dismiss Ponting for 196 and Gilchrist for a duck. The Aussies were about 500/8 and I claimed we'd finish them off in the next over, only for Stuart Clark to hit Anderson for 6,6,2,4 in consecutive balls. Oops. We saw England 'bat' for an hour or so and we finished the day on 50/3. I don't want to talk about it anymore than that!

The next day we went to Australia Zoo, home of the crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin. It was a fantastic day. We saw elephants, tortoises, turtles, crocodiles, alligators, koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, tigers, snakes and birds. We also saw a suspicious bit of turf in the 5,000 seater crocoseum - is Steve Irwin buried there? On the way home we watched a DVD of the memorial service and it was very poignant and sad. The day gave us a much greater understanding of his conservation work. Most people probably think of him as just a nutter who played with crocodiles but he was so much more than that. What a legend.

We're now in Surfers Paradise. It's full of schoolies - school leavers - who are here partying having finished school. From here we're off to Byron Bay, Surf Camp, Barrington then Sydney where we finish the OZ Experience.

That rounds off our mammoth update. Less than 2 months til we return to the UK now!

Lots of love

Jo and Mikey xxx

PS Bull family: the search is over. We have found plastic snakes.