After over a month of rest and recuperation in Singapore, we moved onto our next destinations;

Cairns, Australia.

As Robbie still required physiotherapy on his shoulder, we decided to rent a flat in Cairns for three weeks. We found a basement flat underneath a nice Australians family's home which was perfect for us. The three weeks basically consisted of Robbie going to physio every other day, obviously this was relatively boring for Sarah so she decided to do a dive course for 5 days to gain her PADI certificate.

Sarah's dive course

After looking at the different agencies, I chose to do the course with Pro Dive, one of the best in the country. It was two days theory and pool work and then 3 days living abroad a boat in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. The trip consisted of a total of 13 dives, including a night dive with sharks which was rather scary! Luckily the sharks were not dangerous, they were a type of reef shark and just very curious but it was still a bit daunting jumping into the ocean in the middle of the night surrounded by sharks. I saw lots of marine life including, giant sea turtles, sharks, eels, sea snakes, sting rays and lots of fish! We were also lucky enough to see dolphins and a whale on the way back to Cairns.

Airlie Beach

Once Robbie was on the mend, we rented a 'spaceship' campervan and begun our journey down the east coast to Sydney. Our first stop was Mission Beach where we stayed one night. Next we headed down to Airlie Beach from where we took a 1 day trip to the Whitsundays with Ocean Rafting. We were on board a large speed boat and spent the day boating around the islands, stopping off for snorkelling a couple of times and lunch on Whitehaven beach. It is really worth doing the one day tour rather than three days as 1) it was a lot cheaper 2) you see everything that's worth seeing 3) you get more than enough time in each place.

Fraser Island

We had a long couple of days/nights driving to make it to Rainbow beach on time for our trip to Fraser Island. We did the Fraser Island trip with Frasers. It was a two night three day guided 4x4 trip around the Island. We had a great group of people which was really nice and our guide Geoff was really passionate and knowledgeable about the Island. We had a great trip camping and cooking our own food. We spent the days driving around the island visiting different things including rainwater lakes and tea tree lakes sacred to the Aboriginals. The driving was great fun a mixture of beach and track driving. Sometimes you have to be careful as planes land on the beach as you are driving by!!

Byron Bay

By this time we were pretty used to the campervan and were really enjoying it. Australia is really set up well for campervans there are many rest stops, with free tea and coffee, barbecues and showers. This was perfect as we did not pay to stay in any campsites!! I feel it is pertinent to mention after much abuse in Singapore and seeing the type of people that sport singlets in Australia I have dumped my singlets never to wear them again!!

Byron Bay is a pretty touristy little town on the east coast. After doing our general area search for a covert place to sleep so you don't get caught and fined we had some dinner. After dinner we drove back to our sleeping spot and Robbie realised he had left his sandals under the van and we went back for them but a tramp had go there first! This forced Robbie into buying his very first pair of flips flops and he is now converted!!! The next day we took surfing lessons despite the bad weather! It was great fun and we both managed to stand up a few times (Robbie more than Sarah!) although the waves did not lend themselves to first time surfers because of stormy weather and big rips!

Sydney

On the way to Sydney we stopped for some body boarding at Port Macquarie, it was stormy and raining but this makes it more fun. We stayed in base hostel in Sydney which I would never recommend it's unclean and you have to fork out money for ridiculously slow internet, it is certainly not value for money at $30 for a 10 bed dorm, especially when the guy beneath Sarah wet himself! Sydney was fun but expensive! We met our Irish friends form Fraser Island and went to the Opera Bar located on the water front by the Opera house for some drinks. The next day saw us travelling to the airport to catch our flight to Santiago. We had lots of dirty washing as we knew it would be cheaper to get this done is South America. Robbie was carry the washing and got pointed out by some Chilean men that there was a trail of Sarah's knickers through the airport. Next stop South America!!!!!!!!!!!!!