Oaks Lagoons Port Douglas

... stayed in the 1st night recovering from the night before and watched some DVD's that I had rented, and the next night we went out again to celebrate my actual birthday. It was a fun night met a band that played and they offered Katie and Rory a job to help them in there new renovated house. It was a quiter night but still lots of fun.

Brian here, my turn to work on an update - here goes...

Things are going well for us in Cairns. We are getting to meet lots of my coworkers and they are a lot of fun. The work is going well, I'm working on the audit of a public construction company which has been impacted by the current economy so it makes the audit interesting.

Jill continues to enjoy some time off with daily temperatures in the high 20s. Most ...

Today we went out to see the reef. We left from Port Douglas which is about 40km north of Palm Cove. The boat we sailed on was the Sailaway which is a 50 foot catamaran. It handled very well in fairly rough seas. There were only 20 other people on board with us. We left the port at 0830 and the seas were fairly calm. As a matter of fact, about half way out to the reef we had to start the engines because the ...

... Anyways we then went to an ice cream factory quickly to try some ice cream made from fruits from the rainforest which was pretty cool. After this we then headed down for a river cruise down the Daintree river. We were hoping to catch loads of crocs but unfortunately only saw the one on this occasion which kinda sucked as the guy had seen earlier in the day a croc over 20 feet long! We were even told some sad stories of near by where only 3 or 4 ...

... pretty rough though so lots of people being sick. lovely. got to the site and had all day to snorkel aroudn and look at stuff. i was very lucky adn again managed to not see any sharks. :) although almost everyone else did. was only a reef shark but still, not something i want to see when im in the water. saw loads of angel fish and parrot fish and giant clams that u can put ur hand in. on my second snorkel i heard some people shouting ...

... Our hotel is lovely with several swimming pools and we have an apartment with a kitchen and terrace. Unfortunately it's box jelly fish season so we're giving the sea a wide berth although apparently there are nets. The beach is two minutes away, called four mile beach and it's stunning, we walked there after breakfast and it was quite a way to start the day. We plan to go out onto the Great Barrier Reef snorkeling tomorrow ...

... vantage points of different parts of the rainforest. Rainforests have a wealth of plant and animal life at many different levels all the way up to the top of the canopy and it is quite rare to be able to see all the sections in one place. Alas, because of the cyclone, the catwalks were closed from danger. The cyclone was basically just passing through this part of Australia from where we were in Daintree all the way down to ...

... to get. The tiny car they had though, was a manual shift, which we don't drive, so we got the big guy, which was the only available car any of the rental places had available. The guy at the Budget desk was really friendly and helpful, and told us the drive up to Port Douglas was really one of the great drives in the world- comparable to the Great Ocean Road that I drove a couple of weeks ago. He pointed out a few places we might want to stop, and ...

... In a few minutes, your eyes adjust and you can see the various fungus and lichen that glow in the dark on leaves and trees. And, you can see the fireflies. Who knew there were fireflies in the rainforest? And they do look an awful lot like Tinker Bell, I must say. So, I survived all the spiders and insects and various other night trollers and we all made it safely back to the resort...much to Jenny's chagrin, we didn't get to see any crocodiles. It ...

... lunch in a place called Gin Gin and visited the National Park - koalas and kangaroos etc. Next morning we played golf in the National Park - very different from Ladybank. Loads of kangaroos being amorous on the fairways was my excuse for playing badly ha ha. There were loads of lovely birds flying about. We then went off for lunch and returned to Tina's in Perth to get ready for our next leg which was to Uluru. This was totally different and you certainly see the two Australias ...