CROCODILES & KANGAROOS

Another very different part of Australia - we were hoping for hot, sunny, tropical weather but of course it's the Aussie winter... so we had 3 days of grey skies, rain and wind, but at least it wasn't cold! Cairns is a small city in the north east and now mainly caters for the tourist industry, offering many trips to nearby islands, the surrounding rainforest, diving on the reef, skydiving, bungee jumping, etc, etc. The city itself, although without much character, has a nice tropical feel to it with plenty of good restaurants & bars and many parrots & flying foxes flying overhead.

Day 1 was spent sussing out the various excursions available and we eventually plumped for a 2 day combo deal which took us snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef on Day 2 and then up to Cape Tribulation and the rainforest in Daintree, feeding roos and hunting for crocs, on Day 3. All good, but probably better in bright sunlight and as with everything in Oz it cost a small fortune!

The world's largest reef was beautiful, even under cloudy skies, and we were able to see all kinds of weird, wonderful & colourful marine life. The water was freezing though! Sorry, no pics as the light was very poor that day. And we finally saw some real live kangaroos, albeit in a wildlife sanctuary - it was great to get up close and personal with them. And we saw many other amazing native wildlife, but sadly no koalas! We'll have to save them for our next trip down under.

All in all, our whistle stop tour of Australia has been a great and varied taste of what this huge country has to offer - we look forward to returning one day to explore further (once we've won the lottery).