Australia

Again I must apologise that there will be no photos, i forgot the card reader - again! I'm not far from the hostel but I don't want to waste precious cents on the journey. I'll just have to describe everything in extra detail for you. Lucky people.

Well yesterday was Australia Day, as my clever mum knew already. This became apparent as our first Greyhound bus driver (Mikey, with his white socks pulled up to his knees and a dodgy hair dye job) jumped off the bus and shouted "it's Australia Day you losers! Don't you know what a public holiday is!?" Oops. But apart from not being too keen on working he was very pleasant, pointing out all the sights on the two-hour journey down to mission beach. The main sights were sugarcane, miles and miles of the stuff, and banana trees, of which there were probably even more than the sugarcane. Every now and again there was a worryingly Jeepers Creepersesque farm settlement. The towns were all so similar to the set of an American Western movie, you could almost believe they were 2D. Also interesting was the ten foot high gumboot (wellington boot to most of us) at the entrance to Babinda, standing there because that village has the highest amount rainfall in Australia (about a quarter of the amount in Keswick I reckon). However the most interesting aspect of the journey were the massive signs saying "Speeding has killed cassowaries," with a car and a cassowary, even bigger than the car, meeting each other head on and looking highly unimpressed with each other. Also; "beware - be casso-wary!" The cassowary is a highly amusing creature - until you meet one. This bird is the size of a grown man, has three toes, a blue and purple head, red wattles hanging down from it's neck, a brown helmet-like horn and strange black feathers all over it's ostrich-like body. Check it out on Google. It is highly important to North Queensland as it is the only animal big enough to eat the largest fruits in the area. It excretes the seeds whole (Charlotte this sounds like your speciality now!) in large piles of dung which acts as fertiliser for the seeds. They would be great animals in to hunt for in the rainforest, but Lonely Planet says this about them - "if you feel threatened do not run...try to keep something solid between you and it, preferably a tree"! So maybe i won't bother.

So anyway, back to Mission Beach. As we jumped off the icy bus and said cheerio to Mikey ("enjoy my Mishie!") we were greeted by a random lady who asked us where were off to, and when she heard said she could give us a lift, to save Serge the bother. Serge is our hostel owner by the way. She pointed us to a white minibus with all the seats bar two ripped out, and a big bed in their place. "We're being abducted" Davey said, and he had a fair point, but in the end she was very friendly and told us that there are three things you need in Queensland; Air con, a swimming pool and a lwan mower! Unfortunately our Hostel only had two - the air-con in our room was awful, blowing out hot air! It is so humid here, we really thought we were in for a bad night. It was very friendly and chilled-out, but not particularly clean and there were insects everywhere! Strange tiny shelled bugs on our beds, spiders in the shower, geckos and a massive grasshopper in the entance and david said he saw a rat scuttling along the ledge in the TV room, which is open air! Argh. We were feeling pretty worried late last night as we did not want to stay in this place but Mission Beach is actually three small settlements attatched the three palm-fringed beaches, and our backpackers was the only one we could find in our settlement. Also it is quite a distance from the bus stop so we could not have made it back to the bus stop the next morning. However I remembered Lesley-Anne's words
" There will be great times, there will be awful times, enjoy every minute of it "
and decided to chill out and see what happened. In actuality the night was not so bad, once it cooled a tiny bit outside, and this morning we had a chat to Serge and got ourselves moved to a much MUCH cooler dorm, which thankfully is also a lot cleaner and bug free-ish. Also got him to agree to give us a lift to the bus tomorrow. It's all part of the fun! I think i prefer dorms as they tend to be much airier and you can meet some lovely people. We've met a couple of Dutch girls who are basically doing our trip the other way round, so have been able to give us some tips on where to stay and what to do.

So Mission Beach in general. The beach is FANTASTIC, just what I dreamed about when planning the trip. It is edged with massive palm trees, coconut trees and one which gives off another humungous seed pod which reminds me greatly of The Amber Spyglass, though the trees are obviously a little smaller! I still wouldn't want one to fall one my head. The sand is beautifully golld, and is covered in little crab holes, which are very similar to the worm holes in Monreith, except the sand is much drier so comes out in balls rather than wet squiggles. The crabs are tiny, but further up the sand there are bigger hole, which means bigger crabs! Argh! But they dont come out during the day thankfully for davey, or he'd have to be carrying me everywhere. It's stinger season at the moment so no swimming on the beach proper but there is a big stinger-netted area. The water is simply gorgeous! Bath temperature and just wavey ennough to provide entertainment for hours. I seriously never thought it was possible for water to be this warm, have been in for about three hours today and am pretty burnt, even though i was wearing a long t-shirt. Even inside the net i'm terrified of crabs and jellyfish, and when i saw a big silver fish flupping over the edge of the net this arvo i was outta there! Though of course fish can jump, and jellyfish can't.

Another long story out of nothing i'm afraid, but i'm sure most of you can skim! It's nice to have another place apart from my diary to write an account in a different way.

Next we're off to Airlie Beach ,the first of two places we're using to break up the 20ish hour journey down to Brisbane. I don't know much about it apart from it being a beautiful beach town, but as everyone i've spoken to has told me i have to go there, it is to there we go! Will let you know how that goes.

Now to reply to my many emails! Cheerio x

Good Afternoon,

Cairns today is cloudy and has been raining lightly but as it is about 30 degrees and the rain is not far below that, no one minds much! But anyway, before I blather on about how much I love this place Ill do a short version of how we came to be here, hopefully for you a little less detailed than my diary entry (seven pages and i'm only as far as Singapore!).

Last thursday my parents dropped me off at the very blustery Windermere station. After hugs I jumped on the train, very sad to be saying goodbye but certain I wasn't going to cry. However! As soon as the train started moving we started waving, and as they disappeared out of sight they put out their hands so I would still see them and that just set me right off! The woman next to me got quite a shock I think. This carried on for a good while until the bloke over the tannoy announced the train would be terminating at oxenholme and we'd have to get a bus down to lancaster. I immediately swapped my emotional and organisation heads and figured that this would be alright, i was supposed to be meeting david at oxenholme so as long as we jumped off the bus at lancaster we'd make our connecting train. This all changed as i rang david to find out where the heck he was, and the silly beggar told me he thought he was on the train before me, which had stopped on the track somewhere around cartmel due to the heavy winds. Cue the serious shakes! I got on this bus, which drove down the M6 at a diarrhea-making 30mph, getting me into lancaster VERY late for the train. I wasn't panicking too badly, we still had plenty of time to make it down to Heathrow. I asked the train blokey, how long we'd have to be waiting for the next train - his helpful answer being "no f*$!ing chance love!" The whole rail network had closed down. Great. There are many more details to this part of the story but i can't be bothered with the rest so I'll just say that daivd got off the 'metal coffin' at lancaster station FOUR hours later and thankfully my aunty happened to be in lancaster so we got a lift home back to the parents i'd steadied myself not to see for another three months!

"Separate these bloody paragraphs," Fiona would say.

So eventually, after much panicking and different plans about how to get down into the middle of London at 10:00 the next morning to have our tickets reissued for a hefty price (driving, much to dads disgust) when all the rail network was closed and the M6 was shut just about everywhere due to overturned lorries, we decided we were much too tired and we would just get the train the next morning and hope for the best. Thankfully this worked, and we ended up on a flight on the saturday night.

David found me quite amusing as i giggled with glee every time i was offered something free on the long flights (Ryanair do not do this for some reason!) and I could not get over the fact i had a tv screen on my quantas seat and even a phone, though i was hardly going to use it! Very sad. Anyway, as we came down into singapore the first thing i noticed was the trees! There are trees and plants and bushes absolutely everywhere, and it really gave the city a tropical and friendly feel. Every single building is different and the hotels seem to have a massive competition as to who can look the flashiest. As we had a lot more money than we had planned, due to spending two days less there we decided that if our hotel was crappy we'd slpurge on one of the posh places with doormen, but ours was okay really, apart from the fairy lights on the trees outside!
The city itself is difficult to describe. There was obviously a chinese or japanese city feel to it with massive neon billboards stacked down the buildlings and microscopic (not literally) asian teenage girls texting people at breakneck speeds, but there was a heavy indian influence, with many of the pervy men being indian and incense wafting out every other shop - lots of Nagachampa you'll be glad to hear Charly + Gav! Also the set up of the streets and pavements felt very European, though the smell was most definitely Asian! David and I are now having arguments as he wants to live in Singapore and I want to live in Cairns!
It was very, very hot and humid, so bad that at one point i ended up sitting in an underground carpark for an hour having been so sweaty that i had seriously overheated. For the first time in my life I was glad to enter a Starbucks, as the icy cold air hit me. But really the city is higly impressive and worth a stopover. Chinatown is a real experience, especially with the preparations for Chinese New Year, about which i'm sure the nursery teachers reading this will not want to hear another bit! There were hundreds of market stalls and tiny outdoor kitchens, with gnarled men desperately trying to get you to eat there. It smelt fantastic and was very tempting but as we had a flight that day we thought it not worth the risk. I can't of what else to say about singapore, though i know i had many more views on it! You will all be getting bored and my internet cafe bill will be immense! So i'll just move on to Australia.

I love it! Cairns is a fantastic place to be, everyone is so friendly, and the roads make big squares! Very new to me. There are crocs in the bay so no swimming but there is a free, very clean and beautiful swimming lagoon right on the esplanade, which is a fantastic place to be when the sun is setting on the rainforest-covered hills around. The bay reminds me slgithly of galloway, for those that know it, kind of like Whithorn's bird reserve but with much more interesting birds! Dad you would love it. And yes Anna i have seen a few crabs, but they are quite small, smaller than the palm of your hand but with A MASSIVE RED AND YELLOW CLAW ABOUT DOUBLE THE SIZE OF THEIR BODY! Argh - Peel me! Mother you would not pick these beggars up. I like this place so much I've managed to pursuade Davey that we want to pay for another night in our hotel, we're scrimping the money in other respects.

So, the Reef. I can't quite think of the words to describe how awe-inspiring it was. The was a mix up with the booking in that only David was on the list for diving which was very maddening but in the end i was glad - the introductory dive didn't take you nearly as close to the coral itself as i wanted to go, and the water is pretty shallow though its so many miles out, and the coral so high that you could snorkel right over it so close that if you were evil and bound for hell you could have stood on it in places. The fish! Ahhhh.... Pretty much every shape colour and size you could imagine, it was just mind-blowing and they are so unfazed by humans it was unbeliveable. I separated myself from the other snorkellers and went gallavanting, in one area i found the fish swam up to me and circled around me out of interest! It was just profound. Sorry mum, ive written this in your birthday postcard but it was so amazing i want everyone else to know. A few people spotted a lady turtle, about the size of the one i saw in zante (about a metre in length) but without the barnacles, but they lost interest quite soon. I followed her on,she was moving down by the bottom around the coral, sticking her head in all the crannies and generally scavaging, soon she moved up to the coral directly below me, so close, she was so graceful, it was such a peaceful moment, and then she came up for air right next to me for the first time in about ten minutes. I felt very sisterly and one with the world! I didn't see any sharks but the briefing bloke said they are pretty common, about the hight of a shortish man and very scared of humans so nothing to worry about! didn't reasuure many people, but i wasn't particularly bothered, uncharacteristically. Also i saw absolutely no crabs or jellyfish, which i was very glad about. Probably too far out for crabs. I think thats about all i want to say. Oh yes! There was one fish which was really beautiful, flat sideways and with electric blue red and yellow stripes, it was just stunning but was nesting so if you swam directly above it would swim up to you and start biting you! Probably highly amusing but as most of you with probably know i hate anything even remotely threatening or unnerving in the sea so at any time that one started to move at all directionally i squarked through my snorkel and started madly flupping away! Flup Flup.

Anyway, david is getting pretty bored of his computer now i think, i have been blathering away for a long while! Tommorrow we're moving on to Mission Bay a few hours south of here, it's supposed to be a sleepy village with three fantastic bays, and totally surrounded by luscious rainforest. There's two hostels we want to check out, so we might stay two nights! We'll see. Just ready to kick back and relax for a while after all the exploring and organising we've(i've!) been doing.

So for the rest of the day - i think we're going to take a dip in the lagoon then maybe make use of the free barbeques all along the esplanade, everyone is very chilled and cringingly nice to each other so hopefully we'll make some new friends! I'm determined not to sleep till at least 10, we keep having naps at about seven! As davey sleeps all the time anyway the time differences haven't bothered him, but i keep waking up at midnight, mooching around writing, sudoku-ing and generally being irritated, until about seven in the morning when i'm ready to go to bed but we have to get up! Thankfully though i'm not feeling rough dizzy or disorientated, just a little tired.

Well apologies for the novel, but really it is much less detailed than it could be, so just you all be grateful! Oh and sorry for lack of images, I forgot to bring the card reader into town! Thank you all for your comments, it's good to hear from you all.

Love
Fishcakes
(smells like chicken, tastes like fish.)

Hello everybody,

I am in Cairns, Australia! One could say the journey did not exactly go as planned, but we're here anyway! I can't tell the whole story tonight as we're in a dodgy madarin internet cafe, the owner of it having told us we must be out of the door by 18:59 or will be spanked! Tommorrow maybe. Just thought i'd let y'all know we're alive. Cairns is beautiful and sunny and fantastically laid-back but very humid, even the locals are saying it's too stuffy. Snorkelling and diving on the reef tommorow! Will let you know how that goes.

Sandy
(Smells like fish, tastes like chicken..)
x