Just a lil note to say weyyyheyyy!  I'm at the end of my Australia trip!  1 week left then off to New Zealand.  I arrived here, in Cairns, this morning after ANOTHER shocking (but my last) Greyhound journey.  I have been quite lucky on these buses to be honest, in the sense that I always got a window seat on the over nig...

Je voulais donner plus de sens a mon voyage ici c'est pourquoi je suis parti en bateau, las de vegeter autour de cairns dans mon van mouillé a manger des chips. Une retraite de trois jours pendant laquelle je savoure de precieux instants sous l'eau. Le seul coté desagreable de la plongée est de devoir remonter une fois sa bouteille sifflée alors...

Roger is a partner in the catamaran business "Passions in Paradise" so we ( and 80 others) were blessed in taking her out to two spots on the Great Barrier Reef -Paradise Reef and Michaelmas Cay.  The snorkeling was unbelievable.  I've never seen such colourful or abundance of corals.  I have seen as good fish - spoiled aren'...

Il est 14h lorsque je demarre le moteur, claque la porte et regarde Pauline s'eloigner peu a peu dans le retroviseur. Nous avons fini par jeter l'eponge et c'est dans une ferme piscicole en pleine campagne, a 35 km de Cairns que s'interromp notre voyage a deux. Pauline fera du hoofing dans cette exploitation, des travaux gratuits qui paieront se...

After spending so much time on a bus it was nice to get somewhere where we could relax for a few days.  Cairns is basically just restuarants, tour shops & internet cafes.  There was a lovely lagoon which had a little beach & plenty of grass to laze around on so that's pretty much what we did. The kitchen in our hostel was disgu...

Thursday, August 23, 2007 7:30 a.m. We started with more in-class theory and then poolwork. We learned more new skills and reviewed ones we learned the previous day and then it was lunch time! Time flies when you're having fun! EXAM time! No worries, we all passed. We went to the shop and were filled in about what the next 3 days on the open wat...

Arrived in Cairns in time for Ted to have a bit of a relax before having to take his camper back and sadly leave us to fly back to the U.K. Cairns is lovely with some fantastic Resturants. Spent a couple of weeks in Cairns Having to sort out visa's for Vietnam and India plus having to sadly put Baggie up for sale. Once we had everything sorted w...

This morning I got up and packed up all my stuff as I had to check out of my room by 11am - but I had another ride booked so I left my room at 10am and went to settle up my bill. It seems there's been another silver lining to the cloud that was my postponed flight on Monday - I haven't been charged for the night I had to spend in the h...

My last full day with Monster, and it was not as much fun as driving through the Outback had been, there were far too many cars and the manly roar of Monster's huge diesel engine was muted by all the other noisy road users.  Back to a slightly sterile urban existance it seems...  The most memorable part of my trip up to Cairns was ...

Thankfully we woke to brilliant sunshine today and relatively calm seas for our trip out to the great barrier reef. I had arranged to do 2 dives and Jules was going to snorkel around the reefs. I'm going to leave this one for Jules to write about as she saw more than I did as I had to wait on the first dive for our guide who was having to deal w...