It was the day of the sailing trip & we awoke that morning with no rain!! The roads for the buses were still flooded, so rather than cancelling our trip, they joined two boat trips together. We set sail on the 'New Horizon' with a total of 20 passengers & 4 crew. We had a variety of nationalities on board. England, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Canada & the Netherlands were all represented. Pretty much as soon as we had left the marina, it starte...

Today held the joys of an 11 hour bus ride to Airlie Beach with our driver, Papa Keith. We drove through lots of areas that had been damaged by Cyclone Yazi earlier that year. Trees were almost horizontal, bulidings were missing a roof or missing altogether & the banana crops were having to start growing all over again after being completely wiped out. After being spoilt with a week of glorious sunshine in Cairns, we were most disappointed to drive into rain ...

After chilling out in Alice Springs & the hostel, we caught our plane to Cairns. We were booked on the same plane as our Yorkshire stalkers but were staying at different hostels. Joel & I were booked to stay at Coronas hostel, but our flight arrived after their reception closed, so they put us up in Caravellas hostel instead, but for the same price. Rooms were usually $18, but we were paying $9 a night! Score! Two nights later, the girls joined us at our ...

Jumping out of our swags around 4:45am, we wolfed down breakfast & headed to Uluru (Ayers Rock for you less educated folk) for sunrise. Unfortunately the spot we watched it from meant that the sun rose behind us, with us looking at Uluru. So although it looked good as the rock gradually became more red/orange, I would have preferred to have been the otherside to see it rise behind the rock Lion King style!! After the sun had fully risen, we headed off on o...

Without any time to catch our breath, we started our 2 day tour of Uluru & Central Australia. This time our driver was called Bender, apparently because he had a fender bender with the bus on his 2nd day on the job (reassuring) & not because he was gay! A few of the girls from the last tour, including our Yorkshire stalkers, were on this one as well. The rest of the group we had to meet by doing Bender's version of speed dating, in which you moved arou...