We arrived in Cairns on Thursday. It is a big city with lots of tourist shops and restaurants. It is also very hot and humid but we can't go in to the sea because of stingers and crocodiles. There are however seven lagoons on the waterfront where you can enjoy a swim.

In the evening we got all dressed up and went out for dinner. We went to a restaurant called Ochre, which specialises in modern Australian food. We had a 'taste of Australia' platter for two. It was a four course meal, which was made up of Australian ingredients such as wattle seed, kangaroo, emu and crocodile. It was absoulutley delicious. Our favourite was the entree, which had a selection of smoked sea trout, crocodile wontons, roasted vegetables, kangaroo terine with Kakadu plum jelly, and emu pate. There was lots of food and we felt very fat and full afterwards.

On Friday we pottered around town and had all you can eat pizza for lunch (we couldn't eat much after the four course meal the night before). In the evening we went to reef teach, where a marine biologist told us about all the fish and coral we might see at the reef. It was really interesting but we discovered there is quite a lot of marine life to be careful of. This was a bit unnerving because the next day we were booked to go out to the reef.