I had decided that when I was in Australia I would try to reinstigate my forgotten sailing skills and make them stick this time. Apparently the best place to do this is around the Whitsunday Islands. The base town for the Islands is Airlie Beach and this is where I headed to next. In Cairns I had researched about sailing and found an ideal course called Learn to Earn. The course involved 6 days intensive training resulting in being awarded an internationally rec...

The only reason anyone goes to Townsville is to get the ferry over to Magnetic Island. Deciding to buck the trend I opted to stay in Townsville, and it was a delight. A run down town that is trying to redesign itself, there was a certain charm about it. A beautiful promenade ran along the beach, allowing me to enjoy the beauty of Magnetic Island from a distance whilst still having the joy of a town. It turned out that this weekend there was a VB motorcar race- a...

Heading south down the coastline, I arrived at the beautiful spot of Mission Beach, where the main attraction involved sky diving and white water rafting. I booked a package to do both. The sky dive was supposed to be first but as the weather was bad they postponed it until after the rafting. The rafting was quality- 5 hours paddling through white water on the Tully River. However, on one grade 4 rapid (ie dangerous, Grade 5 is a waterfall, Grade 6 is Niagra Fal...

North of Cairns is Cape Tribulation- where rainforest meets ocean. I headed there on a 2 day trip to explore this stunning area. Breaking up the long drive there, we stopped to walk through the rainforest. In ignorance I hadn't realised Australia had a rainforest. Winding through was a lazy river with gigantic boulders lying in the middle. The water was so clear you could see the fish swimming around from up above and all surrounded by rainforest foliage. It wa...

Finally leaving Asia, I began the next chapter of my journey with an ridicuously long flight to Darwin then connecting to Cairns. Interestingly we had exactly the same plane and crew that took us from Singapore to Darwin as we did from Darwin to Cairns but for some unknown reason they decided that we had to take everything from the plane and wait in an airport lounge in Darwin for 5 hours before reboarding to exactly the same seat. The oddity of Australian travel...