Today we went to Cooktown. We ended up getting away later than we had hoped, but it was ok. We didn’t take our caravan because we wanted to take the 4WD only route. After 2 1/2 hours of driving we arrived. The first thing we did was get hot chips and milkshakes and drove to the top of the highest hill to have lunch. We did some touring around the town, but there wasn’t really all that much to see. Finally we turned around and drove back to Cape Tribulation.

Today we went to a Rodeo. I’ve never been to a rodeo before, but it went pretty much how I expected it to go. I spent most of the day up in the stands watching. They ended up calling an Ambulance three times. It looked rather painful. Afterwards we went home and had pizza with friends that we know in Cairns.

Today we went to Green Island, not far from Cairns. I gotta say it was probably rated within the top ten best days of my life. It didn’t start like that though. We were on a serious time crunch. We had to be in the car driving to the terminal at 8:00. We made it – just. Anyway, when we got there, it was amazing. The first thing we did was went on a glass bottom boat tour. Because we were in the outer reef, there were some amazing corals and colours. But that was not the highlight. After the boat tour, we went to the beach. It was almost in the 30’s,and the water was really warm, but I didn’t want to get wet just yet. We had lunch at a small restaurant. Next Mum and I showed up at the dive shop. I don’t know if any of you know, but scuba diving has always been something I’ve dreamt of. So it was really exiting doing it for the first time. First there was a safety briefing, then we got geared up (which is like 30kg to carry on your back) any finally we did some drills in the pool. After all that we finally got in the boat and headed out to the diving spot. Mum and I had got an instructor all to ourselves. We dived down slowly until there was an amazing garden of coral. We saw and felt some epic things. We came within arms reach of a sea turtle and watched him gracefully swim away. We felt the inside of a giant clam that tried to bite your hand off if you put your hand too far down. We dispersed schools of fish. We picked up a sea cucumber. We saw the type of coral that look’s like it’s breathing. We came up nice and close to a stingray. We saw clownfish in anemones. When we finally got out of the water, I was really satisfied with what I saw. After the dive we went back to the beach. The others had been snorkeling. That had apparently seen some very good reef and rather big fish to. So I went snorkeling with Lauren in the warm, tropical water. But since the tide had come in, the water was less clear and we didn’t find much coral. But we did see some pretty colourful fish. Finally we got packed up. I had one last dip in the pool and we got going back to Carins. We had to move our caravan, but it was ok. After all, it had just been an epic day.

Today we went to the largest living coral reef aquarium in the world. It is called ReffHQ and is found on the main street of Townsville. We had a look around at frist but then we went to a show about preditors in the Great Barrier Reef. there was a diver who dived down into the aquarium with the sharks. She had a microphone so she could talk to us. She also ended up picking up a big fat three meter long shark to show us. We spent the rest of the day driving around Townsville and lookintg at other things around the place.

We spent today at Magnetic Island. We caught the 8:45 ferry to Nelly bay. The first thing we did was rent some cars to ride around in. We wanted to get classic mokes but they didn’t have any left so we had to get things that look like Barbie cars. Luckily Dad and I got a green one and the girls got pink. Lauren and I went on an epic tube ride where they tow you with a boat while you sit in a tube. We headed back on the 4:25 ferry to spent the rest of the day swinging on vines at a big tree at the caravan park.

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while.
We started off today by packing up our caravan (we were in a Big4 caravan park) and began a short drive. We arrived at Bowen and spent a long time looking for a caravan park. We ended up going for another Big4. It turns out we are in the oldest town in QLD.

I’m writing from the cabin of a small yacht anchored in a bay near South Mole Island in the Whitsundays. It’s been a great day! We began by packing up our caravan (as usual) and we headed back to Arlie Beach. We went to the markets to get ice cream before we set off to Shute Harbour. We arrived at midday and began unloading all the stuff from our caravan onto our boat – Out Of The Blue. It is a little bigger than our caravan and it is very comfortable and cosy, with lots of facilities. We’re having fried rice for dinner and pudding for dessert, so I’m starving. We spent the afternoons sailing to our first stop and leaping off the boat into warm, tropical waters. We also took the dingy that we’ve been towing out to the jetty to the resort on the island and went on the beach there. This has been one of the best days so far.

This may be the last blog post for a while. Tomorrow we begin our sail in the Whitsundays. So today began with me going to our hut to check if it had survived a night. And sure enough, it had! So my architectural masterpiece did survive one night. We packed up in a rush because we wanted to do a tour of a sugar mill. We were a bit late so we missed the video at the beginning, but we watched it at the beginning of the next tour. The whole place did not smell of sugar at all, it stunk of molasses. We went through and saw all of the stages that is takes to turn sugar cane into sugar. At the end we got a HUGE amount of fairy floss each and we bought the best ginger beer on the planet! The rest of the day was pretty much taken up by driving to Arlie Beach.

We spent all day at the beach. We built a hut out of palm fronds. We also collected logs and tied some mat-type stuff we found on coconut trees. We also got a coconut open and drank the milk right out of it. The tide went right out about 200m! There were thousands of small purple crabs in groups of about 200 scurrying around at low tide. Lauren was screaming whenever she saw any.

I took a video, so I’ll try to put it up ASAP.

Today our plan was to get to MacKay, mainly because it had rained all last night (again) and we would not be able to get into Canarvon Gorge. So we packed up and were on the road at 9:30. When we got to Emerald, we stopped to get some shopping and look at a big painting (25m). The rest of the day was taken up by heading toward MacKay. But because we couldn’t fing anywhere to stay in MacKay, we ended up staying just south at a place called Armstrong Beach. Our caravan is 50m from the beach (which is really good because I have been deprived of the beach since March). It was 6:30 when we arrived, but it was 20 degrees outside, when it was probably -2 in Canberra.