Cairns (population 120k people) is an access point to the Great Barrier Reef and Cape Tribulation in the north, and is also only about three hours from the Undara Lava Tubes, supposedly the largest lava tube system in the world.

On our first day in Cairns we rented a wreck of a car (it looked like a malt loaf, a little old lady's car would've put it to shame) and drove over a hundred kilometres north to Cape Tribulation, where World Heritage Barrier Reef meets World Heritage Rainforest (yes, I did just steal their slogan).

Reaching the Daintree River we took a wildlife cruise, hoping to spot our first wild crocodile. About ten minutes in and we spotted our first, about two metres in length, hiding under some hanging mangroves so that only it's eyes and nostrils were visible. They can hold their breath for two or three hours, so they are hard to spot as they often sit on the river bed.

Cruising on we spotted dozens of fruit bats hanging from the trees, as well as green tree frogs, an amethystine python, a green tree snake and some large blue beetles, before heading back. A little disappointing on the crocodile front, but the other wildlife was a bonus, and whenever you go on a wildlife tour you can't get your hopes up too much.

Heading on to Cape Tribulation we got to the cape just after a huge downpour lasting an hour (damn wet season), and were lucky enough to have a vivid rainbow over the cape. It's quite unique to have rainforest right next to beach and reef, so makes for some pretty spectacular scenery, though it also means dangerous wildlife, this time the Cassowary, the world's most dangerous bird.

The Cassowary is similar to an emu in size and build, but looks like a punk dinosaur, as it has a mohican (which looks like a rhino's horn in texture) and is a vivid blue colour. It wouldn't look out of place in Jurassic Park, so when we read on the information that one had been approaching tourists, we were on guard.

Luckily we left unscathed (the Dire Straits pumping from our car may have scared him off) and we drove back to Cairns. Does the rain ever stop! Our corridor was flooded when we got back and Rich fell on his ass as he tried to kick a cockroach away from our door!

Day two and we drove our wreck to Undara Lava Tubes, apparently the largest in the world.  The tube was created by an eruption 190k years ago, as when the surface of the lava cooled it formed a crust which was hollowed out by lava flowing below, leaving huge basalt tubes with collapses in the tube at regular intervals.  

We were taken to two sections of tube, which are now home to wildlife such as Cane Toads (102 Cane Toads were introduced to Australia to combat the bugs eating their sugar cane, but the bugs live too high for the toads to reach, so the bugs weren't killed and even worse the toads can lay about 40k eggs, so it is estimated there are now 100m of them.  Worse still, as they are poisonous they have killed thousands and thousands of animals that try to eat them, so now Australians are required by law to kill the toads, so many of them take golf clubs to them or put them in the freezer) and bats, which fly directly at you swerving at the last second as their sonar kicks in.  We realised how much we miss the English sense of humour as this bloke made his girlfriend jump by pretending a bat had flown into her, only to receive a massive wallop round the face from his girlfriend in return.  Very funny.

The caves are pretty impressive, though not as illuminated as they look on the brochure so you can't see as much as you'd like, but I think the light interferes with the bats so I guess they have to keep it pretty dark.  As soon as our guide walked in with his torch the bats started flying from all angles.

We also got our first experience of outback driving on the way to the caves, and as we drove saw some dingoes and a wedge-tailed eagle (nearly 1m in height and with a 2m wingspan) eating roadkill at the side of the road.  It was also our first experience of driving near road trains, which are huge 50m trucks with three trailers that you often see driving across the outback.  As they approached we swerved off the one lane sealed road to let them through, as they don't slow down and their trailers swerve all over the place.  Overtaking is also a nightmare, as they travel at about 100km an hour with trailers swinging from side to side, so you're advised to only overtake if you have 1.5km's vision. 

This was also our first chance to see the red sand desert roads that we'd seen on so many Australian pictures, but it was a lot greener than we expected, and after talking to locals apparently there aren't too many places in the country where you can just see red sand for miles, apart from maybe the Great Sandy Desert to the west of the centre.  Mostly there are sealed roads with red sand to the sides of the road, and then a dry, green desert bush passed that.  We really had no idea Australia was so green, had so much rainforest (and hence rain) and huge mountain ranges. 

On the way back from Undara we stopped off at Yungaburra, which we'd heard was a great place for spotting the illusive platypus.  We'd heard from many Australians that they'd never seen platypus in the wild, but as we arrived at dusk (dawn and dusk are when they feed) we saw one immediately.  Expecting it to be a few feet in length we were surprised to see it was only about a foot or just over in length, though it was pretty cool to watch it dive for food for twenty minutes. 

After gladly handing back the granny mobile, we went on a Great Barrier Reef trip on our final day.  The Great Barrier Reef is synonomous with Australia and was one of the things we were most looking forward to when we arrived here.  We weren't disappointed.

The reef is 2000km's long, in places about 500m's thick, and is not only the most extensive reef system in the world, but is the biggest structure made by living organisms and is visible from space.  It's also just below the surface (it doesn't grow more than 30m's down as sunlight cannot penetrate), so you have to be careful not to stand on it or kick it as it will break and die. 

All that aside, we were a bit worried about snorkelling about 20 or 30km's out at sea, especially in waters that are home to Great Whites and other dangerous sharks, not to mention sting rays, stone fish and box jellyfish too!  Still, we slid into our stinger suits and jumped in, hoping at least we would be quicker swimmers and perhaps less easy prey than some of the other tourists. 

Our first snorkel site was a small island where you could wade out to the coral, being only about 5 or 10m's out from the beach.  As one of the first groups out we were pretty much alone out there for a while, and got to see some beautiful fish (yes, we did find Nemo) and coral reef.  After an hour or so we swam back out to the boat (into deeper water) and saw a few bigger fish hanging around, as our boat (the Passion) does a daily fish feed, so there were some big fish waiting in anticipation.

After the feeding frenzy (our lunch and the fish feed) we were off again to Paradise Reef, a peice of reef which our boat company had exclusive rights too.  Being in the middle of the ocean and in deeper water this site was a bit scarier, but as soon as you get in the water and see the beautifully-coloured reef and these big, beautiful fish you soon forget all that, and they pretty much had to drag us out of the water when it was time to go. 

Back aboard we joined the sunburnt masses (mostly Aussies, as they think they don't need sun tan lotion and like to make fun of the English for using it, even though thousands of Australians die from skin cancer every year.  Doesn't make sense to us, we use factor 30+!) for the two hour cruise back to Cairns.  We thought the reef was only a few metres out to sea from Cairns, but all that snorkelling takes it out of you, so everyone gets some shut eye on the way back.  Only regret, not having more time out there!  It is great!

Tomorrow we fly off to the Red Centre.