G'day all!

Well i don't feel like i could be further right now from the familiarity and comfort of the East Coast...i have finally arrived in OFFICIALLY the middle of very dry, arrid, vast NOWHERE! Turn down the heat a little, add a bit more lush greenery and i could actually be back in my beloved also-in-the-middle-of-nowhere Edgcott!

After a very upsetting last day in Cairns and a teary goodbye to Mathilde & Jasper i hopped onto the first greyhound i have been on since arriving in Oz where i haven't had the luxury of 2 seats to myself....not the nicest on a bus leaving at 12.30 and travelling until 5.30am. Anyhow, after the first change i did get 2seats and some degree of comfort though sleep was pretty disrupted with stops at 3am, 5am, etc at the most terrifying service stops which always resembled something out of a backpacker horror film. Had i not been completely zombified due to sleep depravation i would have been a bit concerned, as it was i could barely function enough to leave the bus. About 30hours in i felt a bit like i had been run over, kicked in the back and had my nasal passages rammed with cotton wool. The whole journey to be fair wasn't as rough as i expected it to be but at that point after 30 odd hours of breathing in air conditioned air, eating only pitta breads with unrefridgerated avocado and philly cheese dips, chocolate sultanas and crackers and cheese, sleeping at a ridiculously unnatural angle, being woken by the drivers loudspeaker announcing another middle of the night/morning stop and always having to rapidly disguise the fact that i had been dribbling all down my own face/neck/scarf (a result of the air con destroying my sinuses i might add)...i was definately after a fully stationary and horizontal bed! The bed that awaited in the hostel here is actually far from luxury - the matress being approximately a centimetre thick and the air resembling the feeling of being in an oven, however after 2nights on the greyhound i still slept like a baby.

Adding a load more pics now - apologies but they are yet again a load of shiney-faced, pissed-up me and friends! You will be getting plenty of interesting scenic ones next time of Uluru, Great Ocean Road, etc now that i have been torn away from my beloved Cairns and Rhino Bar!!!! So since i last wrote, aside from the marathon greyhound journey, i have mostly been out and about in Cairns - more dancing on bars (but fewer near concussions!), intended water-drinking-only-nights going out the window due to fantastic $10 POWER HOURS, a bit too much shopping, lots of coffee drinking....oh and a couple of days in between at rehab/Cape Tribulation!

Last couple of nights/days were, as always in Cairns, brilliant - my official last night out was HILarious, we had (as you will see in pics) a nice fairly big group out and just had such a good laugh dancing away until about 5am in our favourite bar. The crazy French dude in the pics (it's pretty obvious who he is; the one doing the stereotypical French 'mwah' -THEY ACTUALLY DO THAT!!) was calling me Fibie all night as we discovered just a few days before that he had thought for the past 2/3 weeks since we first met in Hervey Bay that this was my name! Jasper made the night however when, sneaking into McDonalds at 5am under the inebriated impression that an egg McMuffin was a GREAT idea, he developed the most irrational rage i have ever experienced (including my own!) because he couldn't get a Big Mac...he proceeded to shout and curse at McDonald's in general and (please bear in mind while reading this that Jasper is THE MOST laid-back, calm and patient person i have probably ever met) then spat on the window..........we were all very much in shock as this was totally out of character, though that actually made the whole episode all the more amusing. So obviously he was then thrown out whilst we all tried not to snort Egg McMuffin out of our noses what with being in fits of hysterics!

Last day in paradise me, Jasper and Mathilde rented a gorgeous little Corsa Cabrio to cruise around the area in - driving around beautiful windy coastal roads, seeing the Atherton Tablelands and spending a good couple of hours waking up in this great little place called Coffee Works where you pay a little and get to taste all the coffees, teas, chocolates and liquors (steered clear of those!) that they make there. It was AMAZING and we struggled to tear ourselves away! Getting back to Cairns that afternoon/evening and having to pack up my bag was emotional; it suddenly hitting home that i was leaving not only a place i had come to really love and get comfortable with but loads of people i had met along the coast who i wasnt likely to see again and the two people who had become my family for the past 5/6 weeks. Was VERY sad and cried a little into my fish&chips that night, not to mention a lot on the bus.

Anyhow, looking forward to getting going tomorrow (at the RIDiculous hour of 4.45 am) with my tour and meeting the group i will be travelling with for the next 10days. It's pretty toasty here but also very dry so believe it or not im barely sweating, not even my overcompensatory (is that a word?!) right armpit....strange! Also lots of, sometimes scary, aboriginal people here who like to shout at each other in the street and hit each other with traffic cones. Pretty amusing, but bit scary at the same time. I'm keeping my head down!!

Right ho well i'll leave you all to enjoy your last installment of Cairns night-out pics and promise to have some more interesting ones next time i write!

Hope all is well in Edgcott, Weedon, Berko, Liverpool, Manchester, Marsh Gibbon, York, Oxford, wherever you all may be!!

Thinking of you all as always, lots of love

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