I arrived in Byron Bay today. It provides a welcome relief from the materialism of the Gold Coast. Byron Bay is a hippy mecca and projects an endearing sense of 60s naivete that is really a thin disguise for successful business. While it is very touristy it's also very relaxed and laid back. It is a beach town draped in tie dye and dreadlocks. Here is where I saw the first busker I have seen in Australia, which is like the first snowdrop of a cultural Spring. There was a mad jazz accordionist and on another street there was a blues man playing some mean slide guitar. Today was also my first foray into the world of surfing and what a kick ass world it is! I had so much fun! While it was a bitterly cold day (March in Ireland only with sunshine) the water was warmer than the air and I was reluctant to leave it after three hours. I did alright at the old surfing, falling over plenty of times, put I surprised myself my staying standing for a long time almost everytime I caught a wave. The big highlight was when a pod of dolphins came racing in along a wave in front of us. It was such a surprise. I saw a dark bullet speeding just under the wave, parallel to it and thought "Wow that surfer is going fast...wait surfers don't surf underwater...it's a dolphin!!!" Unfortunately, the dolphins were quickly followed by a shark so everyone had to get out of the water. When our fear of being eaten was overcome by our desire to surf some more (this took about ten minutes), we got back in and I am pleased to report that I am still in possession of all my limbs, all of which are quite intact.

So far, I love the bohemian atmosphere of Byron Bay but tomorrow, I'm going to Nimbin, which is apparently THE ultimate hippy village. It's difficult to imagine a place more hippy than Byron Bay, but apparently it does exist. There's even a place there called the Hemp Embassy which is a lobby centre for the legalisation of cannabis. After Nimbin, I'm going to climb another mountain. It has got markedly colder although the sun continues to shine and based on conversations with backpackers heading in the opposite direction to me (that's most people - South to North is much more popular than North to South), Melbourne is freezing. It's been described as like an English winter, so presumably it's just like home is most of the time.

Monday is when Australia celebrates the Queen's birthday with a public holiday. The queen of England that is, England being an entirely different country. This is infuriating on several different levels, least of which is the inconvenience which will be caused by disruption to public transport and other vital services, on a day when I plan on making the long journey down to Sydney. It remains to be seen just how disruptive it will be. This is basically a bank holiday weekend here so the roads are clogged up and probably will continue to be until Monday night. All for that bloody Queen! Grrrr!!!!

Well I've been on the Gold Coast for the past few days. When I last wrote, I was still in Brisbane. I did in fact go back to Satchmos and spent the evening there listening to some SWEEEEEET blues and eating kangaroo. I got talking to this woman who gave me a number of her friend in Melbourne who was the head of some blues society so that she can send me to some good blues clubs as soon as I get to Melbourne, which is apparently the music capital of Australia.

The next morning I went to back to the Queensland Parliament House to sit in the public gallery and see the politicians actually debating. It was budget day! It became immediately evident that there was a lot of friction between the state government of Queensland and the federal government. Overall the politicians seemed to lack the charisma and wit to which I have become accustomed from our own politicians. The whole thing seemed like a charade. The government ministers all got to give big long spiels about how brilliant they were and everything they had achieved and the opposition got no chance to speak at all. When it came to question time, the opposition got the chance to briefly ask a question which the Prime Minister had 3 minutes to reply to. Except sometimes they didn't even start the clock until he'd been speaking for a minute allowing him to cram in as much propaganda as possible. The opposition got about two minutes of speaking in over the course of an hour and a half and those two minutes were drowned out by the government fake-laughing very loudly at what they were saying. The chairman happily allowed this but if an opposition member interrupted the government they were quickly reprimanded. Often the laughter was drowning out various statistics - how are statistics funny? You can't laugh off statistics! Overall the whole thing seemed like a fiasco - a circus with the biased chairman as ringleader. It had a lot more in common with the British House of Commons (not that I'm saying the House of Commons is as unprofessional as this house) than our own Oireachtas.

Anyway that afternoon, I caught a short train ride and then a short bus ride to Southport on the Gold Coast. This is the nicest hostel I've been in so far. Like many hostels, they have a cat which always makes it more homey but everyone is just very friendly here and one makes friends very quickly eventhough the place is overwhelmingly filled with English. Two Irish couples arrived yesterday though so I've been chatting to them aswel as a Dutch girl who's in my dorm. For the two days here, it rained solidly. The Australians were overjoyed as they had not seen rain like this in about six months. I was unimpressed. Rain is no big deal. I spent the whole day inside the hostel. Free DVDs were provided so I watched about four films in one day and read a lot. The rain cleared up the next day so I went out to explore and discovered what I already expected - this is Australia's Myrtle Beach - WAY more so than Cairns. It's a total tourist trap. Therefore I'm leaving tomorrow morning. However, I had fun while I was here. I went whale watching. We saw a few humpbacks blowing water out of their blowholes. They didn't jump out or splash us with their tails or anything so it wasn't as spectacular as you might imagine. Afterwards I went to one of the many theme parks around here, namely Dreamworld. It felt like a complete ripoff. The scariest thing there was the haunted house which was actually a haunted maze that you had to find your own way out of and frankly I was genuinely terrified. I screamed till I went hoarse. The maze is full of actors dressed up (very convincingly) as zombies and the like and you're not allowed to hit them, even when they leer right in your face and growl very menacingly. The makeup was very realistic. You can't run becuase there's very little light and there are mirrors everywhere and you could run right into one. The zombies follow you and jump down from walls and everything. I had to physically restrain myself from lashing out. Some of them just stood there blocking your path or walked up to you very slowly knowing you had nowhere to run. I really really wanted to get out but there was no stop button and I just had to find the exit. I eventually found it being gaurded by some kind of demented butcher and hidden behind some black curtains. I literally ran out the door into the sunlight and he followed me out, stood there and then went back inside, closing the door behind him. Terrifying!

The best thing in this theme park though was the tiget show, which I got some excellent photos of (in the Australia album of course). They had four tigers (one of them was white) and the handlers actually cuddled them like kittens and got them to beg and do tricks.  They had them jumping and climbing trees and everything. Daycent! Today, I went to seaworld which is a theme park with an aquatic theme. There's a waterskiing stunt show and various animal shows through the day. There was a seal painting portraits (not very accurate ones - more like abstract art really). I got to see two polar bears fighting each other in the water. They were just having fun but they were kicking and biting each other and dragging eachother underwater. Finally, I saw an amazing dolphin show. They had dolphins tearing along at high speeds and lads standing on top of them. They had them doing all sorts of back flips and really really high jumps. There were two of them that even balanced a human between them (one foot on each nose) as they swam really fast and then jumped really high, launching the human up into the air. And I got a photo of it for ye!!! It really is amazing how intelligent they are. The trainers used hand signals and a little whistle and they knew exactly what to do. Anyway that's all the gossip for now. Tomorrow I'm off to Byron Bay (only an hour and a half away) where I hope to learn how to surf! I will be crossing into New South Wales and finally leaving the MASSIVE state of Queensland. It has become a lot colder and although it still feels like Ireland in May, I know it's going to get a lot colder when I get to Sydney next week. I'll be putting on my geansai!

I am happy to report that Brisbane is a lovely city. It's a nice size - not too big, not too small - it feels about Dublin sized. The climate is almost perfect with plenty of sunshine and comfortable temperatures with the one slight drawback being a shortage of water. It's my first real Australian city experience and my favourite place in Australia so far. People zip around the city on the City Cats which are river ferries. The CBD is fringed by a u-bend in the river. The architecture is stunning and it's the first place in Australia I've been with a real sense of culture. It has more museums, galleries and theatres than you can shake a stick at and the best libraries I've ever seen in my life - both architecturally and in terms of service. However, while it seems like a really nice place to live - there isn't LOADS of stuff for toursits to do apart from walking around the city for a day or two and soaking up the cosmopolitan atmosphere. The hostel I'm staying in is my favourite so far. It's over in the West End within walking distance of the relaxed South Bank recreational area. My roomates have been consistently friendly and engaging over the past two nights which is a first. The first night there was a Belfast lad staying in the room and he was great craic. At the moment there's a German girl, a Canadian girl, a Belgian lad and two Swiss lads. We stayed up last night playing a crap guitar which was provided by the hostel for anyone who might want to use it. Fair play to them! You wouldn't get that kind of service in a five star hotel! As an aside, I saw someone trying to walk a cat with a lead, as one would with a dog this morning. The cat wasn't having any of it. It was very funny to watch. Yesterday I had banana pancakes for breakfast in a cool little cafe called "Satchmos" - a tribute to the late great Louis Armstrong. They've got his records on the wall and on the PA and they've got some live jazz tonight so I might go back for dinner.

Anyway, I have partially recovered from my grouchy mood from the last time I wrote. I bought some sandals to give my feet a break. Unfortunately, these sandals are extremely painful to the soles of my feet. However, they do provide relief to my blistered heels so I tend to rotate my sandals and shoes now in order to spread the pain between soles and heels. I have also invested in a few plasters which have really helped. Best of all, after several hours of wandering dispairingly from one trendy clothes shop to the next, I finally found a Target outlet [FEN: like Dunnes] where lo and behold, I stumbled upon an acceptably baggy pair of jeans with a thirty inch waist (they call them 77cm waists here which was confusing initially]. Eventhough I'm really a 28inch waist, these don't actually exist and I like a bit of breathing room anyway. Of course these pants will never fill the shoes of its predecessor. The pockets are smaller and there's fewer of them. And it's just newer and harder and fake-faded. But it's more than I expected to find so I'm fairly happy.

After my shopping success, I went to the planetarium. I'd never been to a planetarium before and didn't know what to expect. There were plenty of fascinating exhibits on space exploration and a display of astronomical photography which was breathtaking. The main event though was the big 360 degree skydome on which a short 3D film narrated by Harrison Ford, explored the possibility of life on other planets and our chances of finding it. This was followed by a huge projection of the night sky on the dome and we were given a guided tour of the various constellations. It was so exciting to realise that the stars I was looking at were completely different to the ones I usually see in the backyard at home. There was no sign of the plough or the north star. Instead there was the southern cross which is the constellation depticted on the Australian flag and which can be used by navigators to find true south. I'm in the other hemishpere! That's mad! After the planetarium, I dragged myself several kilometres up to the top of Mt Coo Tha for a spectacular panoramic view of the whole city of Brisbane at sunset. It was the most spectacular sunset I'd seen in a long time with brilliant ochres and crimsons. The city was to the east though so the sunset was framed by trees rather than by skyscrapers. I went to a church yesterday where an Aboriginal woman gave a big speech about equality for indigenous Australians. This was something I was very interested in hearing about and I asked lots of questions afterwards. I knew the Aborigines got a pretty raw deal of the English but I didn't realise just how bad it was and just how recently they were still being badly treated. Aborigines were classified as flora and fauna by the explorers who "discovered" Australia. This allowed them to classify Australia as uninhabited and theirs for the taking. They immediately set about poisoning the Aborigines and attempted to exterminate then in what can only be described as a genocide. When they gave up on this final solution, they came up with a new strategy whereby the children of of Aborigines would be taken away from their mothers and put in institutions in order to kill off the Aboriginal culture. These children are called the stolen generation and 40% of them went on to commit suicide. This practise continued until the 1970s. That's not very long ago. This year is only the fortieth anniversary of the Aborigines being given a vote following the results of a referendum on the issue. To this day, the majority of Aborigines are poor, they have poor access to good education and healthcare, a lower life expectancy and less chance of finding even unskilled jobs even though there are plenty of them. And guess what - just like in America, blacks go to black churches and whites go to white churches. When the Aboriginal speaker addressed the white congregation, she used the terms "our people" and "your people". Clearly racism is still a huge problem in Australia. There is a national Sorry Day as a sort of apology to the Aborigines. However, the Prime Minister refuses to issue a formal apology on behalf of what previous governments did to the Aborigines. He refuses to acknowledge all of the atrocities that happened. Australia now has equality in theory but clearly it has a long way to go before it has equality in practise. This would require changing the attitudes of millions of people and nobody can do that.

Today, I took a guided tour of the Queensland Parliament House. It's nice enough but it ain't got nothing on our own Oireachtas. The place is littered with symbolic vestiges of the Empire. There's a throne given as a gift by Queen Victoria which only the current Monarch or Governor has the right to sit in. There's a royal sceptre and parliament cannot sit without it. There's a clock given as a gift by Prince Charles and a stain glass window of Queen Victoria. Some Australian coinage still has Queen Elisabeth on the back (although some have an Aborigine!) Many of the streets bear Royal or British connotations in their names and then of course there's the Union Jack in the corner of the flag. It was only in the eighties that "God Save The Queen" was replaced by "Advance Australia Fair" as the national anthem. Australians seem to be unconcerned by their evil colonial heritage and seem reluctant to shake off the shackles of their past and assert their unique national identity and "take [their] place amongst the nations of the world." No offence Australia, but where's your sense of national pride???

The ignorance about Ireland so far has been staggering. At least Americans seemed to know where it was, that it was a country and that it had something to do with leprechauns. Australians are down with the leprechaun part but so far I've met a scary amount of people who actually though that Ireland were still part of the UK and were surprised by my strenuous protestations. Another common misconception has been that Ireland is a war zone...seriously they think Cork has pipe bombs going off all the time. They must have met someone from Knocka. Everytime I tell someone I'm from Ireland, they inevitabley ask suspiciously "which part?" Not that they know any Irish geography. They just want to make sure I'm not from "the North". It's quite demoralising to see that Ireland is associated only with leprechauns, bombings and riots abroad. When people find out I'm Irish they look at me as if I'm a very resilient individual to have survived this long. Why don't Americans get this reaction? Statistically, you're probably several thousand times more likely to get shot in America than in Ireland. Australians also seem to think that Irish people are violent and alcoholic by nature. I can understand the alcoholic part but they don't realise that the "fighting Irish" are just an American Football team. In a way it's a little funny to see people so wary of me as if I'm suddenly going to start smacking them for no reason. With so many Irish people in this country it's difficult to see how these stereotypes have survived. Maybe they're self fulfilling. Anyway, that's definately enough ill-informed social commentary for today. Tiocfaidh ar la!

 Ok, I made a slight error when I said the trip to Brisbane was 11 hours. I actually confused AM and PM and arrived in Brisbane at 7PM instead of 6:30AM as I had expected. So it was a 24 hour bus journey which is my new record. It really isn't as bad as it sounds. Even when you wake up at dawn excpecting to be nearly in Brisbane only to be told you've got another 12 hours!!! I do have a marvelous capacity to deal with extended periods of boredom - to me it's a valuable opportunity to catch up on my reading. The landscape became progressively less tropical and more bushy as we headed south with lots of barren hills and plains of red soil and brown grass and the odd tree. Every few miles there was a house. We passed through more small run down towns than I care to remember before I finally hit the first big Australian city an hour ago. It's raining gently and it's late so I think I will wait until the morning to begin exploring it.

I find myself rather irritable tonight though for several reasons, the main one being the tragic loss of my pants. How do you lose your pants, you may well ask. Well...I left my pants...in Cairns...high on a washing line...it calls to me. I also left my towel there but I don't care about that and it has already been replaced. I only realised I didn't have my pants on the bus down here. That leaves me with just two pairs of shorts so I will need to buy a new pair of long pants because I am travelling south into winter. The loss of this particular pants is exceptionally painful for me as we've been together for about seven years now. I grew from a teenager to a man in these pants (they started out too long on purpose cos that was cool back then). Over the years, the pants grew with me so that they developed that natural faded look with those little holes that only come from years of wear and cannot be replicated by cheap manufactured aging imitations. They had long ago lost the hardness that comes with new pants and adapted to the contours of my posterior. The thought of having to bear this hardness again is almost too much to imagine. It will be impossible to find another pair of pants to fill the massive shoes my old pants left behind. Speaking of shoes...these are another source of my irritability. Somehow my feet seem to have suddenly swelled or something because my shoes don't fit comfortably anymore. My feet are covered in blisters and sores and every step I take is agony. I am limping on both feet from having spent all day every day for the past three weeks walking everywhere. If I am to explore this city over the next few days, I will need to give in and buy sandals which I hate. This means carrying my shoes around on my back, which means a significant increase in weight. New pants and sandals also means wasting about half a day tomorrow trying to find ones that fit. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find pants with anything close to a 29 inch waist and 28 inch leg? Not that hard actually - just go to Cairns and walk down to Cairns City Backpackers on Draper St and you'll see the only pair in the world hanging there on the line amongst hundreds of other items of clothing.  I'll never find another pair of pants like that. I know all you other short guys out there feel my pain. Add to these sources of angst my sunburn and a nasty cut on a joint of my right index finger from razor sharp coral yesterday, and they all add up to make one grumpy little munchkin!!!(me) And having avoided buying anything in the dozens of shopping centres I had to pass through in Malaysia and Singapore, tomorrow I have to actually seek one out and do some shopping! What a waste of sightseeing time!!! I hate shopping! Maybe things will look better in the morning. It better not rain tomorrow or I will be really mad! Good night.

Another day, another liabililty waiver form. Today it was snorkelling and scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef! Finally! Since I have an hour and a half before my bus to Brisbane leaves, I thought what better way to spend it than informing you of the day's occurances.

It was a two hour trip out to the reef in the good ship Reef Cat. After the mandatory formalities such as paperwork and instruction on the use of the equipment, I was straight in the water. After discovering that salt water tastes really really bad up your nose, I got down to checking out the local wildlife. It was truly amazing. The place was absolutely TEEMING with fish of every imaginable colour, swimming just out of reach in the coral below me. It was definately a good idea to go for the snorkelling before going all out with the scuba diving. It got me used to breathing with my face in the water and not breathing through my nose. I could hardly wait to dive down and join the fish.

There was a lad called Dohnnie (probably not spelled like that) from Laois [FEN: County in Ireland] diving that day too. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Shortt [FEN: Irish Comedian]. He was there on his honeymoon with his new English wife. He had done it before so had some idea what he was doing. He even spotted a shark when he was snorkelling. There are plenty of non-agressive sharks around the reef but that was the only sighting of the day. We strapped on our tanks and after some last minute instruction and excercises, dove down. It's a really weird sensation breathing underwater, sometime you nearly forget to do it but holding your breath while deep underwater is a big no no because your lungs are much smaller deep underwater so they can't handle it and collapse. It's also incredibly painful on your ears and you have to remember to do a weird thing with your nose to make it ease off. You have a weight belt around your waist which is basically a load of stones tied on to you to make you sink. If you want to come up you press a button and your vest gets filled with enough air to make you float up but you have to do it really slowly or else your ears will explode. It's totally worth all the hastle though becasue it's so amazing down there. The landscape makes you feel like an astronaut floating through an alien planet where there's no gravity. It's a lot like flying because you're free to move in three dimensions which is a very liberating feeling. I was surrounded by schools of fish. I saw angel fish, butterfly fish, parrot fish, giant clams, star fish and two little clown fish staring out at us from the tentacles of a sea anomae. By the time I was running low on air, I was glad to leave this alien planet behind though because my right ear was acting up again. It's still a little weird and I'm not allowed to get on a plane for 24 hours. It's quite humbling to see hundreds of tiny fish darting about effortlessly and even with the most advanced human technology, the best we can do is move around very slowly and very clumsily in this environment. If we had encountered any aggressive sharks or anything else that would have forced us to change direction, we would have been pretty screwed because we were just too slow. In fact we couldn't even swim up to the surface or down to the bottom quickly if we had to because we had to change depths slowly in order to allow our ears to adjust and avoid getting the bends. We were at least two hours away from the nearest decompression chamber so we're talking about two hours of excrutiating pain and possible brain damage. Luckily, this didn't happen and I had a great time. I would highly recommend diving to anyone not easily scared. It's really more scary than skydiving because there's a lot more that could go wrong, and if something does go wrong, there's very little you can do to get out of there quickly without making something else go wrong. Anyway, it was a remarkably sweet way to spend the day. Must run for my bus now - I've got a long road to Brisbane ahead!

Today was another glorious day - so glorious in fact that I finally got sunburned. My skin now matches my Cork jersey! It was bound to happen sooner or later. I would have put on sun cream if I hadn't left it back in the hostel! Anyway, I got up at an ungodly hour to catch the ferry out to Magnetic Island in order to do some sea kayaking. There were droves of school children getting on the ferry at Magnetic Island to go to school on the mainland. Their uniforms are so funny! They all have to wear these totally gay sunhats with wide brims as if they're a group of jungle explorers or something. Our kayaking guide was a very eccentric Sheffield man with a comical sing song tone to his voice and an encyclopedic knowledge of the local wildlife. We spent several hours paddling about from one bay to the next, stopping for a surprisingly gourmet breakfast on one beach. There was a tablecloth, various fruit, muesili, hot tea and coffee and a vase of flowers! He was able to carry all this in waterproof bags in the storage compartment of his kayak! After the kayaking, I went bushwalking around Magnetic Island. I saw two cockatoos and lots of the tiniest little lizards I had ever seen. I climbed to the top of the mountain where there was an old abandoned military base that had been used during World War
II. The views from up there were incredible. It must have been very weird to discover Australia, step ashore, and see such alien trees and animals that you couldn't possibly have dreamed up. Who could come up with a Kangaroo - I giant bouncing rat that can destroy your car - or a duck billed platypus - a cross between a duck and a beaver? It's just a naturally weird place. After my bushwalk, I found a deserted cove and I went to cool off in the surf with nothing but sand and an unconcerned piece of driftwood for company. This is living!!! You don't even really need to bring swimming togs or a towel. Once you've been out of the water for about 15 minutes your shorts will have dried off anyway! A most agreeable day. Tomorrow I will go scuba diving on the reef and tomorrow night I will get an 11 hour bus ride to Brisbane. As I move down the coast I am ticking off more and more things on my Australia to do list. The only things left that I can think of are surfing and whale watching. I don't know if I'll get the chance to do both because it's very early for whale season but if I do, it'll be on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane where the first whale sighting of the year was made yesterday. I'm still way up in Northern Queensland but if I'm in Brisbane for Saturday I could be finished with Queensland and onto New South Wales by next week so I'm making pretty good time so far. To give you an idea of my itenerary here's a little map of my proposed route:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Cairns&daddr=Townsville+to%3ABrisbane+to%3ASydney+to%3ACanberra+to%3AMelbourne&mrcr=4&sll=-26.1136,149.65031&sspn=35.083252,59.238281&ie=UTF8&ll=-27.371767,149.238281&spn=34.721164,59.238281&z=4&om=1

I started at the green marker and now I'm at the first yellow marker and I should be at the second one by Saturday. I don't absolutely have to be at the red marker until the second week of July so at this rate I'll make it earlier than that. Note the distance between the first two yellow markers. This will be a mammoth trip tomorrow night which I can hopefully spend mostly sleeping! But we'll cross that bridge after it's gone. I'll write again sometime this weekend hopefully. Until then, good luck!

I’m glad to report that Townsville meets with my approval. It’s a much more agreeable town than Cairns. It’s a lot older, it has history and this is reflected in its beautiful architecture. It’s also a bit less touristy than Cairns, although this isn’t very difficult! Best of all, there hasn’t been a drop of rain since I got here! Nothing but sunny sun, gentle breezes and comfortable temperatures in the high 20s. Since I had been expecting rain and high winds I had booked a skydive for today, assuming it would be cancelled whereupon I could have shrugged my shoulders and said “well I tried!” Therefore I was quite uneasy when I awoke this morning and saw crystal clear skies. I had to go through with it now. And so I did. I jumped from 8000 feet and there was a twenty five second freefall. I thought this would be interminable but it was actually quite enjoyable. Then I felt the parachute pull me back towards the sky and I spent about five pleasurable minutes gliding back down to the beach with beautiful views of the ocean, the city and the reef. It was a very soft landing. The worst part was sitting in the scarily tiny plane thinking about it and sitting on the edge of the doorway with one foot resting on the landing gear, sticking my arm out only to have it nearly blown away. Once I was in the sky plummeting towards the ground, it was surprisingly relaxing! I laughed the whole way down with relief. I had a dream once where I was a bird and I was flying really high and there was a cool breeze blowing across my face. It was a very real dream where I really felt the sensation of flight and this parachute ride brought the dream rushing back. I stuck my arms out and pretended they were what I was gliding on. It really was a delicious experience.The airbase that we took off from was actually run by the Australian military so before we took off I got to see several army helicopters flying off. The city of Townsville is a small one that’s built around a big red mountain and kind of feels like a desert outpost and a beautiful seaside town at the same time. Tomorrow I am going to visit the nearby Magnetic Island, so named because it caused Captain Cook’s compass to spaz out and swing around in all different directions. It’s supposed to be very scenic and I will be taking a tour around it’s bays and cokes in a sea kayak, which should be fun. Then on Friday, if the weather holds up, I will hopefully, finally get to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef!!! But for now I shall make do with the lovely Jacuzzi in this pleasant hostel. Adieu!

That crocodile last night was delicious by the way! Like chicken but with more flavour - I would prefer it to chicken. I've been having some real trouble tracking down a place to eat some tasty koala though. It's a pity because they're so fat and tender - they spend their whole lives just eating and sleeping so their muscles don't get all hard and stringy. I imagine it would be somewhat like veal...mmm. (Before the little children start crying I'm only joking. I wouldn't eat a cute little fuzzy koala...unless I was really really hungry and ketchup was provided.) My thighs continue to ache from gripping that ATV and that horse with them. My thigh muscles are not ones that usually get a work out so they've been protesting at this unexpected exertion. You really need strong thighs to ride horses and even more so for ATVs to avoid getting thrown off. I've just come back from a firing range in Cairns where I finally got to fire some pistols! They're far less accurate than the .22 rifle I shot in Myrtle Beach and there's way more of a kick off them, particularly the 9mm which meant that several of my shots went outside the black part of the target. One of the pistols had a laser sight which you would think would give it perfect aim but as soon as it fires the muzzle kicks upwards making it difficult to hold straight. Eventhough they are less practical than rifles, pistols continue to be really cool! Apparently 10% of Australians own a gun but there's less of a gun culture here than in America of course although definately more than in Ireland.

I've checked the weather forecast and the rain is falling all the way down the coast and there's no sign of letting up anytime soon. The rain isn't the main problem for scuba diving but the wind. At the moment it's gusting at between 20-30knots and by the end of the week it should be down to about 15-25knots which isn't really much better. You need very gentle winds for scuba diving because obviously wind causes waves and the bigger the waves, the more sediment is lifted off the sea bed and bashed against the coral and all the sediment muddies up the water reducing visibility to about three metres when you really want it to be more like 20 metres. So it's looking like I may not get any scuba diving in Townsville either. I may have one more chance further down the Queensland coast. Fingers crossed!

The rain blatantly refuses to stop falling. I stubbornly ignore this inconvenient fact with the help of a raincoat and an unhealthy measure of perseverance. I didn't find out until I got here that this part of Australia is referred to as the wet tropics. It has the highest amount of rainfall in the country with records of almost eight metres of rain some years. Roads are frequently flooded. The main tourist attraction in a village near here is a giant bronze eight metre statue of a wellie [FEN: gum boot] which is the same height as the record rainfall they had there once. This was not exactly what I had in mind when I left Ireland! Therefore, tomorrow I will be moving to the dry tropics to a very creatively named town called…Townsville. Seriously. The weather is rumoured to be SLIGHTLY more hospitable there. The inclement weather thus far has been unsuitable for scuba diving and skydiving, two types of diving I was eager to try while here. Hopefully I can do them in Townsville instead. I have however made the most of my time here. I did some excellent white water rafting. I didn't matter that it was raining for that because we were all soaked already. I shared my raft with two English girls, three Japanese banana plantation workers and one extremely cool Aussie guide. We saw some beautiful sights and had some hair raising moments on the Tully River. At one set of particularly violent rapids, I was thrown head over heels out of the raft. I stayed underwater until I found my lost paddle and then went with the flow for a few seconds before hauling myself (with a little help) back into the boat. One of the English girls was flung head first right into a huge boulder, which bounced her back into the raft. Luckily her helmet took the full force of the blow and she was alright.

            The next day I went to a big farm and spent the morning riding around some scarily rough terrain at high speeds on an ATV. In the afternoon, I went horse riding which was a very pleasant and relaxing experience after the ATV…until my horse, Dice, decided to canter off after a runaway horse who had lost his rider. I having no riding experience whatsoever, was very indignant that he completely ignored my commands to stop and it was all I could do to hold on for dear life until he decided to stop himself. The rest of the ride was without incident though and I didn't fall off once!

            Today, I went on a river cruise through the rainforest to try to spot some wildlife. I also visited a crocodile farm where I got to see them being fed. These crocs were way bigger than the ones I saw in the wild. Check out the action shots! Since I've been here, I've seen so much wildlife. I've seen kangaroos, cassowaries, koalas, kingfishers, crocodiles, wombats, lizards, snakes, eagles, wild turkeys and the beautiful bright blue and strangely named Ulysses Butterfly which only exists within a 300km radius of here. The cattle here (of which there aren't many) seem to be mainly of an Indian, floppy-eared, saggy-necked, hump-backed variety. Most of the agriculture here is sugar cane though because there is a thriving sugar industry here. Bananas are also grown. There is also some more exotic farming though. Seeing all that wildlife really gave me an appetite so I have tried kangaroo (which is delicious – almost like beef) and more tropical fruits than I could name or identify. Tonight I will have some crocodile tail for dinner. The chatty Cork girl who served me the kangaroo assures me that it's a lot like chicken and "taaaaasty"! As expected, there are plenty of Irish people around here although not half as many as in Myrtle Beach. I think this would be almost as horrible a place to have to live and work as Myrtle Beach because it's so commercial but its fine for a few days of action. It's too early to make a judgment about Australian people. So far they've all been very friendly but I suspect this is because I've been giving all of them money in exchange for goods and services and have yet to chat with an unbiased ordinary Joe Soap Australian. They mostly look like stereotypical Australians though – bronzed, brawny outdoorsy types with khaki shorts, hiking boots, wide brimmed hats and sometimes even knee-high socks! There are a lot of Aborigines around. I had no preconceptions about Aborigines because all the marketed images of them dancing around wearing war paint, I correctly assumed to be mostly a tourist gimmick. However, they mostly seem to quite poor despite the amount of "Authentic Aborigine Artwork" being sold around the place. The seediest bars in town seem to be frequented almost exclusively by them and any of them who actually spoke to me were asking me for money.

There are a lot of funny place names in Australia like Walla Walla and Yorkey's Knob and a lot of Irish place names too such as Ballina, Lismore, Charleville and there's even a Grafton St here in Cairns! I have just returned from a marine biology lecture to help me identify various marine life and to avoid the dangerous ones when I hopefully go looking for them in Townsville. I have yet to see any tropical fish in their natural environment and I really hope I can go out to the Great Barrier Reef this week. All depends on the weather. Fingers crossed! Gotta go eat some crocodile now! Ciao/chow!

We flew into the dawn which crept across Cairns above the cloudline. There is nothing more spectacular than dawn viewed from above the clouds. Then you go under the clouds and it's totally crap. I actually feel cold here because it's only 23C and it's been drizzling most of the day. Cairns is a small city which is disturbingly reminiscent of an Australian Myrtle Beach. Before your heart sinks, remember that Myrtle Beach can actually be quite fun for a few days...if you get the weather for it. I'm spending five nights in this city although the next one (Townsville) will probably be the same story. However, the sea is too choppy for good scuba diving and the winds are too strong for skydiving and it's just too wet for almost everything else. This is a very outdoorsy place and there's not a lot to do when it's horrible outside. Nevertheless, tomorrow I will go white water rafting come rain or shine - you're going to get cold and wet doing that anyway so the weather won't matter. The hostel is fine - I had a room to myself last time I checked although this can change at any time. I do share my room with a small colony of ants, a slightly unpleasant odour and Pocahontas bedsheets though. There is a "pool" although it's the size of the puddle - you can't swim in it - you just sit there and enjoy the cool relief from the heat of the day...except that there is no heat...only rain. I'm out of time here so I'll have to go but I'll update more when I have something to tell. Bye!