Cairns, for those of you who don't know, is most definitely not the state capital of Queensland as per my email...just having an off moment on that one...it is of course Brisbane, home of the Broncos (and Gordon Tallis - grrrrrrrrrr!). Either way it's a pretty cool place absolutely teeming with backpackers. We have been staying at 'Tropic Days' for the last couple of nights, run by Gabriel - a 16 stone 6 foot plus Aussie dude...and it's great. If only all hostels were like this...friendly, inviting, knowledgable, well equipped and just a ball of fun really. Part of the deal with staying there is that you get a free meal every night at 'The Woolshed'. On arriving it's a bit like a soup kitchen with 10s of hungry emaciated backpackers (and me!) queuing for free food. When you enter you can upgrade to a better meal by paying about 2 quid. I had steak on both nights we went and it was marvellous...steak, chips, veg, pepper sauce for 2 or 3 quid...MAGIC! Having said that at around 10pm when food stops being served it just basically becomes one big student night complete with bad dancing, awful music and hilarious drunk 18 y.o.'s. It couldn't have been all bad as we stumbled out at around 1am the first night.

Cairns itself is quite a cool place - the city centre is new thanks to some hurricane or other a few years back and it shows. We spent most of yesterday booking stuff for the trip down south and we now have the following to look forward to:

23-26 June - 4 day, 3 night liveaboard diving...got it at a stupidly cheap price, and they come highly recommended. Apparently they've got all new equipment and a new boat to boot. One of the sites we are going to is the SS Yongala which is one of the most famous wreck sites in the world - for info click here.
27 June - Jen and I travel from Townsville to Airlie Beach (by bus) where we stay for a couple of days before we head out to the Whitsunday Islands with these guys on 29 June for three days. Pat leaves us here and is flying to Brisbane before the long haul back to the UK. On our first ever sailing adventure we are on this boat and the company comes highly recommend it. Helen and Rich have had an awful time on there one by the sound of things so we thought we'd go for one a little higher than our budget...it'll be interesting to see if our dinghy sinks, or if the crew have never sailed a sailing boat before...I bloody hope not.

After that we have got connections through to Hervey Bay (for Fraser Island - going to go 4WD/camping ourselves and hire stuff when we get there), and onto Noosa before hitting Brisbane on or avround the 14th July. The 16th of July is State of Origin III (which is now sold out) and we've got tickets!!

We also booked a car for today and tomorrow mainly so we can get down to Townsville tomorrow, but also it gave us the opportunity to explore the Atherton Tablelands today (not Table-lamps as Pat thought they were called). At the Budget rent-a-car place they very kindly offered to upgrade our Renault Clio to a 3.5 litre automatic Mitsubushi beast for a whole 2 dollars (80p) a day...it was a really tough decision. Girl's car or Animal - you decide... So off we went and had a great day. The landscape itself is mostly ex-volcanic areas thuis there are a few craters and the like and some hills that look like volcanoes...We also went to Lake Berrine which is a deasd ringer for Coniston, and had a cracking couple of hours watching the wildlife (2 pelican's that you could get within a couple of feet of were the highlight) and having a lazy lunch. We also managed to visit 'The Crater', Barron Falls, and a couple of massive fig trees that were over 40 metres round the base. Both were also over 50m tall and over 500 years old, they are basically parasites that have lived off the other trees and now stand up of their own accord long after the other trees have died.

In other news I have broken the first bed on our travels - no real story other than the fact that one of the supports underneath buckled and then the bloody thing snapped. We bent it back into shape but it was well and truely 'fubar'ed - Gabriel said he wasn't surprised - the manufacturer went out of business a few years ago apparently...

Pat did a skydive today from 15,000 feet. He said it was utterly amazing but on the downside it was all over within about 7 minutes (and wasn't cheap - over 200 quid). He got the piccies done and there are a couple below.