Arrived in Queensland....very hot and very humid....and where a lot of animals want to kill or maim you. Stayed in a great hostel with a pool, its own calyso bar and and all-you-can-eat buffet every night!

Took a day trip out to the outer parts of the Great barrier Reef and did two very cool dives. Amazing coral and colour and even swam briefly with a White Tipped Reef Shark. Even managed to not soil our attractive leotard stylee protective stingers suits when we spotted him circling us Jaws fashion. The flimsy leotards apparently save us from the various killer jellyfish in the water including the most deadly which is invisible, the size of a little finger nail and has poisonous tentacles 5 metres long!! Such fascinating marine life in Oz.

Spent a couple of days just chilling out in Cairns and the man made lagoon following the safety sign advice to avoid death by crocodile before catching an overnight bus down the coast to Airlie Beach.

At this point the plan was to spend three days sunning ourselves as our luxury catamaran cruised us round the Whitsunday Islands and famous WhiteHaven Beach - voted the world´s most beautiful beach.

Sadly we had not reckoned on setting sail just as a huge cyclone hit Australias shores and our luxury cruise was no more....it rained non-stop for 72 hours....and for the second evening were forced to take shelter at one of the marinas due to four metre waves!! Luckily everyone on board was really cool and the crew were great - we even had a BBQ cooked by some poor soul standing turning the sausages in a huge rain slicker and gale force winds on the back on the boat. Great tucker though!

Went for two dives and even swam alongside a giant turtle and some very wierd looking batfish.....we even got to sail the boat and sit getting very wet on the boom nets!

When we arrived back to Airlie Beach we discovered everyone in town was completely stranded by floods.....no cars going in or out..... there was nothing for it but to party for the next three days with our fellow sailors!! So in true survivor style we played plenty of drinking games, got up to shenanigans with Paddy in the bar of the same name and even attended our first ever Jelly Wrestling competition! 

It was like the 1980s never ended, such a choice of entertainment.....jelly fights, pole dancing dance -offs and wet T-shirt competitions.....at one point the jelly compere actually annnouced ruefully "Oh, shame, not a single titty out tonight!". Class. 

Final glee was spotting loads of real life roos hopping about like fools alongside the road on our last ever 5 km in Australia on route to the airport!!! Super chuffed after a month of seeing dead ones!!

Next stop South America...........xx