I've been rather bad at updating recently, partly because everywhere i go the seem to be welsh chav's downloading porn on every available computer, but mostly because i'm lazy.
Rockhampton: a quick walk into the city told us that there was lots of steak, lots of threatening indigenous folk, and very little steak. The hostel we stayed at however was a highly pleasant experience. It was run by a short and jolly lady called Robby who calls everyone Lovey, "cause you're all my Lovey's," and who spent the whole day cleaning up after you, untill you felt utterly guilty for not getting up to help!
We decided we'd seen much too much of the civilised Australia by now and not nearly enough of the Outback, so we booked ourselves on Capricorn Dave's Beef n' Reef tour, as recommended by a good few of the Jackass boys. As soon as we met him, we understood why - this guy was mental! His minibus was (at the start of the tour) white, with notes of thanks from past customers scrawled all over every available inner surface. We started to worry when we read comments such as "I licked an ants anus!" However, we needn't have worried, apart from Dave's driving - it was raining properly for the first time in a year, so he drove into bogs as fast as he could, turning the steering wheel from left to right lock until the mini bus was so badly stuck that all six of us had to push him to few hundred feet onto vague tracks. He drove so fast over unset road that the whole bus became an all over clay paintjob.
First thing he did was take us to an American live shooting range in the middle of the outback! A heavily-armed guy told us to shove off, so he drove 200 metres down the road, parked up and led us in his bare feet to a place where we could easily scale the fence! We wandered around for an hour or so lifting up logs untill we found something. What did we see...hmm....Oh! we found a little scorpion, dave tried to annoy it until it attacked him, we found the coolest jewel spider actually a lang crab. It looks kinda like a tiny hermit crab except its shell is covered in the typical aboriginal pattern, it was very beautiful. We found mammoth meat-ant hill and did the Antdance of Pain, In which you stand in your bare feet on the hill getting thick ant-socks for as long as you can until the biting becomes too bad to stand! Out of all Dave's customers, the record was six minutes, and that guy had to spend a night in hospital!
After that we wandered round a tea-tree forest for about half an hour looking for snakes - it smelt fantastic - but there were no snakes to be found that day. Ten minutes later we found a very recently dead one on the road it was stupidly long, about 30cm longer than me probably. We stopped to have some lunch and friendly banter and then drove a few k to an abandoned barn where dave immediately started looking for massive spiders. While we were waiting, a very sweet tree frog hopped onto one of the guys shoulders and generally kept us amused for a while.
After a while i got a bit bored and started searching in this big gnarly tree - and found a massive toad! I told Dave but immeditaely regretted this as he started cursing loudly at the toad, grabbed it violently by its hind leg and flicked it very hard a few times behind the eye - of course it was a cane toad. For those who are new to them the cane toad was introduced to Queensland from abroad to keep down the numbers of pests that attack crops, but in practice the toads choose to live in open spaces instead of crops and kill/outcompete all kinds of precious native creatures, They're also very ugly! He was flicking it to show us the poisonous parts of it that kill any creature which tries to eat it. After telling us about it and generally abusing this creature, he carted it behind the tree and we heard the grusome sound of a cane toad being whacked mercilessly in the head against a stone. I felt very guilty.
After this epiode Dave went back to searcing for spiders and eventually after shocking it out of a hole with the flash from my camera(!) brought us a huntsman spider.
As you can see it's pretty scary looking and when asked if i would like to have it on my hand, i came out with the lamest excuse ever - "I'm not scared of it, i just don't see the evolutionary benefit of picking it up!" As ths drivvle escpaed from my mouth i realised how wimpish it sounded so just decided to get on with it; this was the kind of thing i had come to Australia for anyway! And it was loads of fun, for such a big spider it felt so delicate on your hand, really quite a nice sensation! So of course i put it on my face...
Steve, one of the guys in the group was a big arachnaphobe, but after seing us all with the spider faced his fears and after some serious girding of spirit held it on his hand and eventually ended up wandering around with it sitting on his hat, very proud of himself!
It really stared pissing it down by this point, so dave of course took us to an isolated billabong with a half-metre deep mud base to cover ourselves in mud and swimm with turtles, not that we could see them. It was very warm and a pretty fabulous feeling.
It was such a brilliant day! 
By the time we left Rockhampton it was raining heavily further north of us, flooding so badly that no-one could get higher than Mackay, about 200km away. Not sure if that has turned into a cyclone yet, haven't been near a tv since then. let me know if there wwas anything on the news! Luckily we were going south, and after a twelve hour overnight journey we arrive in brisbane, where the weather has been fantastic! I love this city but i've been on the computer for almost an hour and want to keep the costs down! Also Woolies (Woolworths is a full scale supermarket over here!) will be closing soon and we want to get some food to make tea with.
Hope you're all well and have enjoyed the entry!
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