Hello from the Great Barrier Reef!!!

Cairns!! Tuesday October 14th, 2730 km north of Sydney

On Tuesday we arrived in Cairns, the end of the road for our Greyhound trip. We spent Tuesday night relaxing by the pool ready for our big adventure the following day. On Wednesday morning at 6am the hostel firm alarms went off and we stood outside the hostel with a hundred or so other bleary-eyed backpackers waiting for the firemen to give us the all clear. After that we quickly arranged our flights back to Sydney and headed down to Cairns harbour to catch the catamaran out to the outer reef. Ninety-minutes and a hundred or so sick bags later the catamaran pulled up alongside the pontoon. Lee and David went on a guided snorkeling adventure to a part of the the reef ominously known as 'scary point' - although it's only really frequented by reef sharks that are completely harmless. Whilst they were doing that I had an hour or so of tuition aboard the catamaran with my scuba diving instructor. I learnt how to communicate under water with different hand signals, how to breathe using the regulator mouthpiece under increasing water pressure and how to equalise the middle ear and sinuses during descent, and how to use the diving belt and buoyancy compensator - basically how to press a button to inflate and deflate the dry suit jacket. After that I walked down some steps into a partially submerged chamber beneath the pontoon deck before descending 50ft down a rope to the sea floor.

The reef was amazing and everything I hoped it would be. Once down on the floor I was able to chase brilliant green parrotfish that seemed to almost fly over the coral with wing-like fins. A 2m long humphead wrasse known as Wally came over to investigate us weird-looking creatures floating about clumsily with our tanks on our backs. Wally rubbed its head against my arm - a truly massive head that dwarfed my body! I also managed to find Nemo, this particularly timid clownfish was hiding near a giant clam that was about 4ft in diameter and felt velvety and smooth on the inside, as I touched it it suddenly sprang shut.

After some more fun aboard the semi submersible I did a bit of snorkeling over the reef. Once again chasing parrotfish I managed to stray quite far from the boat. The reef ended sharply as I floated out over a coral cliff that dropped below me into the depths. As I squinted through my mask I could just discern a large bulbous-looking shape in the darkness followed by what I thought to be tentacles dripping down around it. Having decided in my irrational state of mind that I was now being pursued by a giant jellyfish I turned around, slapped the parrotfish out of the way and swam like crazy back to the pontoon, grazing my knee over a piece of coral jutting out from the cliff.

Starfish anyone?

Lee and David in the semi-sub

The scuba tank below the pontoon deck

Greenhouse, Paul Greenhouse.

Cairns Harbour

Magnetic Island and the Bungalow Bay Koala Village

Friday 10^th October, Airlie Beach, Many Many Kms North of Sydney

After 17 hours of travelling up the coast we clambered out of the bus dazed, we'd finally reached Airlie Beach; gateway to the Whitsunday islands but since we lacked the $1500 needed to sail around the islands Airlie beach would be little more than a stopover for us. We walked down to the water for a paddle and found a large jellyfish warning board planted in the sand, and based on the board we agreed the species of jellyfish most likely to sting one of us is the Irukandji; a tiny box jellyfish 1cm across with a single transparent tentacle a metre in length – how do you see that coming?! Aside from general nausea and back ache the most interesting symptom associated with a sting from this little beast is "a dreadful feeling of anxiety". So for an anxiety-free paddle we went for a swim in the hostel pool instead. Still feeling tired from the bus ride I massively overestimated the depth of the pool and decided to dive-in, face-planting into the bottom of the pool and taking a layer of skin off the bridge of my nose. So after a slightly painful sojourn into the mouth of the Whitsundays we climbed aboard the Greyhound for our penultimate trip to Townsville to catch a ferry to Magnetic Island!

Above left - A tropical storm viewed from the shelter of the Greyhound.

Saturday 11^th October, Magnetic Island!

For four hours the Greyhound cruised up the Bruce Highway, a green and brown smudge of sugar cane plantations and dried up creek beds rushed past us. After 15-minutes of killing time at Townsville we boarded the ferry and made the 20-minute trip over choppy waters to Magnetic Island – a world-heritage listed island that is also home to Australia's largest colony of Koalas in the wild. Once there we took a bus along a winding cliff road to the Bungalow Bay Koala Village where we'd be staying for the next three nights. The Koala Village is based near a koala sanctuary where ill koalas are cared for before being reintroduced to the eucalyptus forest. The village is made up of 40 A-frame wooden huts that accommodate 3 people in each, all centred around a lagoon swimming pool and set in a clearing in the forest. Wildlife can be found everywhere. Stop to look around for a few minutes and the floor is alive with lizards, giant ants, geckos, possums, wallabies etc.

Later we celebrated David's 28^th birthday with a special meal. We didn't have access to a large supermarket so we had to make do with what we could rustle up at the local shop. The starter consisted of microwaved garlic bread which Lee and I then pan fried until it was crispy/soggy. This was followed by pasta with sun dried tomato pesto, and to finish a $5 cheesecake that had defrosted nicely in the lazy afternoon Aussie heat. Happy Birthday David!!

Magnetic Island (in the sun)

Sunday 12^th October, Moke-ing About

On our third day on the island we hired a Moke. In case you've never come across one before a Moke is basically a little jeep that's just perfect for exploring a small island. Ours came with a custom paint job of 'The Phantom'. We each took turns to do the 12km run from one end of the island to the other. The gears were a bit fiddly at first but after a few minutes of painful grinding we had it down. David had not driven a car since 1998 and since The Phantom doesn't even have doors there were more than a few "we're going to die" moments as he negotiated some hair-raising bends along the cliff top.

We did a 2km walk to the top of one of the islands two summits to an abandoned Second World War fortress. On the way we found a sign that read "Danger Death Adders". Anything with Death in the name is unlikely to be friendly but in the end we didn't run into any death adders, instead we stumbled upon a mother koala and her baby. The animal spectrum in Australia is truly wide, on the one hand the continent is home to something like 9 tenths of the world's most venomous animals and yet on the other hand it's home to animals so cute and defenceless that were it not for the almost timeless geographic separation of Australia from the rest of the world the latter would surely not have survived into the present.

There is only one 12km stretch of road across the island so we explored as many of the cul-de-sacs branching off the main street as we could, many ended in Indiana Jones-style paths complete with giant boulders, eroding stone steps and thick vines hanging down from the forest canopy - and yes, we did swing on them and they held our weight… just. When we picked up the Phantom they explained to us that the first 60km of fuel is free but no one ever goes over that anyway. Well, I'm quite proud to say that we did 105km.

Our next and final stop in Queensland will be at Cairns and will mark the peak of what has already been an awesome adventure covering nearly 3000km of the Australian coastline. Now all that is left is to do some scuba diving over the Great Barrier Reef!

Crikey Mate!! Australia Zoo!!

A week ago we realised that our Greyhound tickets grant us free admission to Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin - how could we not visit the home of Australia's son? So on our way to Noosa Heads we jumped off the Greyhound around 9am ready for a 7-hour tour of Australian Fauna. The first hurdle was stowing all of our stuff in the zoo lockers. Ordinarily this would be a case of dropping some extra cash and getting three lockers but since we'd gotten in for free we weren't quite ready to part with $15 each. It took 20 minutes of rotating and squeezing (with added profanities) to fit our luggage into one locker. Baggage free we wandered into the zoo and the first thing we came across was a large bronze memorial of Steve Irwin. We made our way through the reptile section first, where we each had an opportunity to handle a baby American alligator – something David didn't relish the idea of but did anyway - fair'd income to him as they say here. I still don’t know what that phrase means but I say it anyway, David says G'day to everyone he meets and that seems to go down pretty well, when in Rome.

After the reptiles we got to see a pair of tortoises that grow to be the largest in the world, two brothers that due to their bad eyesight occasionally mount each other, a disastrous situation as often one will roll over onto its back and if left alone will literally boil inside its carapace. Unfortunately the world's oldest tortoise kept in captivity, Harriet the giant Galapagos, died on the 26^th June 2006. It hatched in 1830 on one of the Galapagos Islands and was taken over to England by Charles Darwin in 1834 where it spent many cold years before moving to Australia in 1842. Not a bad innings at 172. We skipped the Asian Elephant pageant to make sure we had good seats at the Crocoseum where we got to see a lot of strange birds fly in from across the zoo as well as some obligatory crocodile feeding antics.

The peak of the zoo experience had to be the koalas. I wasted most of my digital camera memory filming koalas on the off chance that one might wake up and move. Over the day I managed to capture a few seconds of koala action - a koala munching on a Eucalyptus leaf. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for one koala hanging lazily in a forked tree branch as a procession of people took turns to stroke it. I can only hope that the koalas are on rotation otherwise it will soon have a hand-shaped bald patch. koalas may be the cutest animals on Earth but a close second has to be the wombat as they are like living teddy bears. I captured plenty of footage of a wombat picnic as well as a wombat having its stomach scratched by a zoo handler. Unfortunately for you guys back home I only had a day bag with me and lacked the space to steal either a wombat or a koala to bring back to the UK.

On our way to 'kangaroo heaven' we past through the 'Crocodile Hunter Story', a few corridors packed with photos, drawings and poems dedicated to Steve Irwin and his family, as well as a tribute including several hundred khaki zoo shirts covered with thousands of messages from fans all of the world pegged across both sides of a long fence. If you ever visit Queensland make sure you visit the Australia Zoo, easily the best zoo we've visited.

Below - Some might think David was a little excited about visiting the zoo.

Above - Battle of the cutest animals, Koala or Wombat? It's just too close to call...

Tuesday 7^th – Thursday 9^th October, Noosa Heads, 1100km north of Sydney.

After 7-hours at Australia Zoo we caught a courtesy bus to Noosa Heads. Ninety-minutes and two episodes of Croc Files later we stepped off the bus at Noosa. The hostel consisted of two quaint 19^th century wooden buildings encircled with wide verandas that the rooms opened onto. We spent most of Tuesday on a 6km trek around the heavily wooded peninsula. As we moved round the coast the views of the bay opened up revealing more and more of the stunning landscape. Being in Noosa Heads is like taking a holiday from a holiday and it's no exaggeration to say that the beaches here make Bondi Beach look like Weston-super-Mare.

On our way round the coast we came across a metre-long monitor lizard, the kind we'd seen in the zoo the day before. Since this one wasn't shielded behind a glass wall I decided to go off the beaten track and follow it through the dense undergrowth, staying close behind as it crunched through the dead leaf litter and ducked under exposed roots. After satisfying a small childhood fantasy to be a wildlife film maker we moved on. After walking for a few minutes we came across a guy limping past with a slightly bloodied bandage wrapped around his foot; apparently he'd been bitten by a python! We looked down at our open-toed sandals and decided that it might be better to stick to the track from there on. So we followed the track to a cliff called Hell's Gate, on the way we stopped to climb down to a secluded beach to go for a swim in warm clear emerald-coloured water. At Alexandria Bay we plodded the soft wet sand enjoying the cool sea water that lapped at our feet until a group of backpackers warned us of a snake lying somewhere in the sand a few hundred metres ahead. We past an emergency telephone on the beach and scanned the sand, scrutinising every stick and sand pit we came across. The southern end of the beach was populated by nudists standing up to maximise their exposure to the sun. Trying not to stare at them as we examined the sand we narrowly missed stepping on the snake, which slipped off up a sand dune and vanished into the trees. Half an hour later we made it to the southern side of the peninsula and took in a fantastic view of the Sunshine Coast.

Thursday 9^th October, We're on the Night Bus!

We enjoyed a long sleep-in this morning to ready ourselves for climbing back aboard the Greyhound. We're riding the Night Bus later, ready to crash and burn from 4pm this afternoon until 9am tomorrow morning, rocking up the Sunshine Coast to the Whitsunday Islands some 2136km north of Sydney.

The Pacific Highway

The Prawn Supremacy

Continuing on our travels up the Pacific Highway we stopped off for a break at another awesome roadhouse (the Rock Roadhouse we saw earlier last week has nothing on this). On Friday the Greyhound pulled up at the Big Prawn. I immediately preferred the Big Prawn to the Rock Roadhouse, and not just for it's B-movie charm. Whereas the Rock is essentially a small version of Uluru there is no larger version of the Big Prawn to be found anywhere in the world. This is the definitive Prawn. We've heard rumours that there's a Giant Lobster out there, but for now the Big Prawn remains the king of the road

Friday, Byron Bay, 759km north of Sydney

We spent a few hours hill-walking to reach the lighthouse at the top of Cape Byron. The sun has been extreme the last few weeks and we're all several shades darker than we've ever been - Lee's sandals have left him with tan stigmata on the top of his feet. The vistas of the bay were stunning and totally worth the climb - these beaches are the real deal. Unfortunately the YHA was fully booked out so we had to slum it in a hostel called the Arts Factory. This place was hell on Earth and crammed with 18-30 party goers from England. In the evening we went to see a family jug band perform, it consisted of an old man on a banjo and his 8 kids most playing washboards and one who tap danced on top of the tables - proper hilly billy stuff.

Sunday, Coolangatta, 875km north of Sydney

Situated at the most southerly part of the Gold Coast where impossibly perfect white sandy beaches seem to stretch off to infinity. Nice place, though the YHA sucked - an enormous aboriginal guy and his son tried to fleece me for $10, which was weird.

Monday, Brisbane, Capital City of Queensland, 1011km north of Sydney.

Brisbane impressed us. Attractive and compact with large free open air swimming pools complete with fake beaches on the south bank of the city, all opposite the colourful city skyline. Very nice place.

Crocophile Dundee

Greyhound Stop 2: Bellingen, 748km north of Sydney

Wednesday, 9.30am. We checked out of the Newcastle YHA and ambled down to the bus station to catch the Greyhound to Urunga, half-way between Sydney and Brisbane. The trip took over 8 hours with the temperature outside bordering on 30 degrees. Fortunately the air conditioning was working well and the bus was only half-full so we could stretch our a little. On the way we made a pit stop at the 'Rock Roadhouse' a miniature Uluru / service station - elaborate roadside signs and petrol stations are an abundant feature in Australia.

At Urunga we switched to a minibus to take us the remaining 15km to Bellingen, a small town of roughly 2000 people nestled in the base of the Bellinger Valley. Bellingen is a town that wouldn't look completely out of place somewhere in the old west - the first transport we spotted in the town was horse-powered. The hostel itself is a quaint collection of small wood cabins connected by narrow paths, a place where wide verandas overlook distant mountains and rain forest, and hammocks creak in the breeze near tall palms.

On Thursday morning we hired canoes and paddled down the Bellinger river. Our guide Aussie Daniel pointed out to us huge rock dragons sunning themselves on the quiet river banks, enormous bee hives cemented in the tree tops, and majestic eagles swooping above with wingspans comparable to the length of our canoes. But we weren't paying much attention to Aussie Daniel as we were having far too much fun playing with the floating plastic crocodile head he'd planted in the water to scare us, but now his plan had backfired and the tour was in real jeopardy as we amused ourselves taking photos next to the head instead of listening to him. If our crocodile head antics weren't bad enough we spent the rest of our time racing up the river and trying to ground each other's canoes on the river banks by ramming them or worse still using our paddles to push each other into low hanging tree branches. Which was all fun and games until I came out from one crawling with tiny black spiders. I managed to flick most of them off but one got past me. There was only a moment to act but the distracting laughter from across the river slowed my reactions and the spider got in first. Ordinarily a spider bite wouldn't faze me but when you're in a country renowned for being home to the world's most poisonous creatures, added to the fact that you're paddling down a sub-tropical river only a few miles from a rain forest it's hard not to worry. The bite quickly hived up to about the size of my fingernail. I paddled over to Aussie Daniel to let him know. His response "aw well, that could be a bit of a problem, if it gets any bigger don't worry about it, if it gets really big then... aw well don't worry too much, but it could be a bit of a problem eh". A bit of a problem eh?! Fortunately it didn't get any bigger. After an hour of paddling the heat finally won out and we decided to heave the canoes out of the water and go for a swim in the river. After that we paddled back to the canoe cabin for a well earned lunch of succulent watermelons, juicy oranges and tasty croissants.

Later that day we borrowed three inner tubes and trekked a mile upstream to the rope swings. After half an hour of launching ourselves into the crisp cool water we eventually tired of being shown up by 12-year old kids doing back flips off the highest rope swings. So lazily we sagged down inside our inner tubes and floated effortlessly down stream until we came to the rapids. No one had explained that the "rapids" are about 3 inches deep. Not expecting the change in water depth we scraped our backsides over 20 or 30 meters of jagged rocks before reaching deeper water. At one point we got stuck as the water forced us forwards against rocks that skewered through the rings. Lee hit the rapids first and screamed as the rocks stabbed upwards, seriously reducing his likelihood of having children someday. David and I followed close behind, our tortured screams disturbed picnics up and down the river as we lurched forwards over the rocks.

After we survived castration falls we changed rooms to open air beds overlooking the Valley. Not our choice, but they were the only beds left due to some world music festival that's happening on Friday and the crazy demand for beds. We covered ourselves in mosquito repellent to avoid being stung. Lee managed to spray the highly toxic insect repellent directly at his face, making his already bruised lips (see surf board incident) sting even more.

Arrrghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Croco-head attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!