Chilled in Cairns and Sydney

But for different reasons. Unsurprisingly 21C feels very cold after 2 weeks of 32C...

So Cairns, what did I do in the end? The answer? Honestly not a lot! It's difficult to motivate yourself in that humidity and I think I was getting a little bit of travellers burn-out after moving so much since I left home!

I did go up to Cape Tribulation, where I saw crocs and cassowaries and many other things that can kill or maim you if you look at them a bit funny! I stayed on Myall Beach for 2 nights, wandering along the beautiful beach (bordered at one side by unbelievably blue sea and on the other by unbelievably green rainforest), wandering through mangrove forests, and rainforest to (very cold!) swimming holes, and swimming in the pool at the hostel. Because it's stinger season, which means you don't go swimming in that beautiful blue sea, even if you have been baking on the beautiful sandy beach!

The first night there me and two German girls headed to go and see the beach in the dark. We got as far as the archway over the path that leads to the beach before we hit our first obstacle. In the form of a spiders web. Except we couldn't see the web in the torchlight, only the spider hanging in the middle. After a bit of squealing the web was removed by very girly waving of a long dried leaf held at arms length. We continued down the path, which was bordered on each side by shallow water. Which then made me freak out about crocs (occasional rustling of leaves behind us didn't make me any more confident). With the potential to be eaten by something unseen, or worse encounter a spider in the dark (ok, maybe my priorities are SLIGHTLY skewed...) I chickened out and headed back to the dorm. I was followed all of 3 minutes later by the other girls. It seems one said to the other "it's very dark, isn't it?". The next night we made it to the beach in a group of 5, accompanied by a guy who walked in front to remove any spider webs (although we didn't tell him that was the reason...) we got to the beach to find that the tide was low and eerie black lumps were emerging from the sea close to the shore. These were the remains of an ancient coral reef that was close to the shore until the rainforest moved down to the lowlands and leached nutrients out of the soil into the sea, killing the coral. We had a very successful bonfire on the beach, sand inbetween our toes, listening to the waves and the crackling of seaweed being thrown onto the fire (until one guy forgot to shake the sand out first and nearly put the fire out!).

After Cape Tribulation I headed back to Cairns to a new hostel (I can't recommend Dreamtime enough guys!) for a few days before a trip to the Atherton Tablelands. A definite advantage of this trip was that it's cooler in the mountains! We swam in Josephine falls, sliding down the waterfall and plunging into the freezing water, then laughing at each other as we attempted to get enough purchase on the slippery rock to climb back out of the water and to the top of the falls again! Fortunately we didn't find out about the 6 ft eel or the catfish that inhabit that pool until after we got out! On that day we also saw the Devils Pool (abbreviated to "Evil Poo" on the sign of course) where many young men with more testosterone than sense have vanished. If you jump into the edge of the pool it spits you out down the river. If you jump into the middle it sucks you down. It's a whirlpool and they haven't found the bottom. The even let a 1.6km weighted line down it and never found the end. One theory is that it leads to a known freshwater spring out in the Pacific. Which would be why only some of the bodies have ever been recovered. Needless to say that no-one fancied a dip at that moment.

Also in the tablelands we saw platypus - or as much of them as you ever see, and Musky Rat Kangaroos (which are just bouncing rats really). As well as driving along a road that gives even the strongest stomachs a run for their money!

Back in Cairns and I FINALLY ventured out on the reef. But only snorkelling having had a cold recently and still having blocked ears... I must say, I'm not so much a fan of snorkelling - my mask kept filling up so I had to empty it about every 30 seconds, and the sea was quite rough, so I think I drank about half of the Pacific through my snorkel (yes I know I'm exaggerating a bit!). However, the view was AMAZING! And I had all sorts of brightly coloured fish swimming around my hands, and I saw a shark! Which I'm assured was a reef shark and harmless to humans, but was still rather bigger than I expected and did nearly make me swallow my snorkel!

The best bit of the day for me was the trip home though. We were on a small boat, around 15-20 passengers, 3 crew (all Brits!) and we switched off the engines and sailed the WHOLE way back to Cairns! We got a little wet, and our captain DID manage to put a little more of the boat under water than he meant to - probably because he was busy chatting up a bikini clad girl - but it was great fun! So yes, I LIKED sailing, and can only conclude that the reason I haven't liked it before is that England is COLD. Of course the wine and cheese we were served on the way back may have influenced my opinion rather too...

And now I'm in Sydney. And an MP3 player down, which I'm very unimpressed about. I arrived at Base backpackers to find a filthy smelly room and no common room. I immediately booked somewhere else and got my money back, so I'm now out near Kings Cross (the red light district) in what feels like a leafy London suburb. I have a bank account, a medicare card and a mobile. As yet I do not have a job or a flat, but I'm working on it - everything stops for weekend here!