Magnetic Island
I almost forgot, after The Whitsundays we spent a couple nights at Magnetic Island which was fun. We got upgraded to our own private room with our own bathroom, fridge, and tv. So that was nice after our previous night at Magnums Airlie Beach (yuck!). We spent a day on mountain bikes, we figured out why they were relatively cheap, hills! So we got a workout. But what goes up must come down right? So that was awesome, flying down the dirt paths with their runoff mounds that made nice jumps. The view was great at the top at The Forts where we left our bikes and did a bit of hiking. There was a lot of evergreen type trees and boulders here, very interesting...

Cape Tribulation!
We were at Cairns for a night and then headed out early morning for Cape Tribulation. We stopped at a river crossing and took a short river cruise looking for crocs. While sipping Daintree tea we spotted a big guy half on the bank. He was to be the only one, but it was cool to see one in the wild. After the short ride were were back on the bus on the other side (it took a ferry). Cape Tribulation is a rare spot because it is where two world heritage areas touch, the rainforest and the reef. At high tide the ocean comes right up to the roots of the dense forest. This forest was special apparently because it had a lot of ancient plants, some prehistoric, like the King Fern. It also apparently is dangerous, blah blah blah, wait-awhile vines with spines that grab you and blah blah, plants that poison you to the point of cardiac arrest blah blah, cassawaries with disembowling claws and a headbutting horn blah blah, crocodiles that can detect you from 200 meters, have gotten as big as 8 meters long, 2 tons, jaw strength of 3000 pounds per square inch, bite you, drown you, and leave you to rot, perfect hunter blah blah...boring! Haha, the rainforest also lived up to its name, and it poured! Apparently they get rain 300 days of the year here, 4 meters on average. Wherever the land touches the clouds it can get up to 8 meters because of cloudstripping. So this place is wet. Lots of cool stuff. We were here for 2 nights and mostly read but did a bit of exporing in between downpours. Yay!

Mission Beach
This place was nice, it had seen a bit of damage from the recent cyclone. So it was interesting to see all the broken vegetation and trees, the houses were not damaged much or were repaired already in this area. We checked out the beach which was across the road from our accomadation and looked around. It was cool gray weather so it wasn't busy there at all. We fooled around with coconuts for a bit that were everywhere (probably blown out of the trees). After climbing one I tried knocking down some that looked to be the right color for eating (the expert that I am from watching "lost on a deserted island" type movies). We opened one that was orange and it was not ripe yet, green was the color I remembered from the movies but the only green ones I could see were small, also unripe. I had given up because all the good ones were probably blown out of the trees, and then I saw them! There was a bunch of green ones splotched with brown that I was eyeballing. After I knocked them out with some grounded coconuts we set to work on them. They are a lot of work with no tools and no knowledge of how to open them. We figued it out finally and enjoyed the fruit of our labors. We were only here for a night and the beginning half of the day because we were moving on to Cairns...

The Whitsundays!
This area was gorgeous...our boat was not, haha! It was still fun. We found ourselves on a booze cruise, with no booze, everyone else brought enough to satisfy a large frat house for a week. So we tried to avoid most of the unsavory characteres we met onboard, hahaha. Though we made a couple good friends, Derek from Dublin for one and Eric from Holland. So we hung out with them. The Whitsundays are a group of over 70 islands at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef. Azure waters and green islands with white beaches. We went snorkeling a few times and even got to do a intro scuba dive. SCUBA is awesome! I deffinately will look forward to doing it again sometime. We saw all kinds of fish and it was all amoungst beautiful coral also teeming with all manner of anemone and the like. We made a trip to Whitehaven beach which is the most beautiful spot on the National Heritage protected bunch of islands they will take us to. The sand was a lot like the sand at a few of the lakes on Fraser Island, the stuff that looked like flour. We spent 2 nights on the boat, which were also interesting, being full of drunks. As it was the engine was running all the time, so that made it harder to sleep as well. The ipod was my only hope, and it served me well the second night. The food was better than I expected, I was full at every meal, which can be hard to do. All in all it was a great trip.

Airlie Beach
This place was interesting. The place we were staying was by far the worst. It was a party hostel "resort." We were in a 10 share room, and the two nights spent here, before and after The Whitsundays, was not much fun. The town had some cool stuff, like a man made lagoon. We spent most of our time at a book exchange and hung out there reading. The real reson we came to Airlie Beach was The Whitsundays...

FRASER ISLAND!
This place was great. We joined a group of 7 for a total of 10 people to fit into one toyota land cruiser. We loaded the roof with camping supplies and food and set off. We took a barge from Rainbow beach and in 10 minutes we were driving on the sandy beaches of Fraser. We saw a couple beautiful lakes, one was really big and turned out to be shallow even 100 feet out, the color was amber from tea tree oil. The next one was aqua blue with white sand that looked and felt almost like flour. That lake got deep really fast. Marc was standing maybe 5 feet from me and he had a head and shoulders out of the water with feet on the bottom and I had to swim about twenty feet to find it where I was just the 5 feet away. Then we saw Indian head which was some impressive cliffs where we could see turtles and such below us. Then the famous Lake Mackenzie which was a bigger version of the aqua blue one I described earlier. I got to drive the 4x4, only problem was that it was standard and I had only driven stick once before. I figured I'd rely on my motorcycle clutch skills(it's a standard too). Haha, I got some funny looks when I mentioned that, but they let me have a go. They said it was scary at first but I got the hang of it. I had fun the whole time, haha. The first night I shared a tent with Ethan, but it was a 5 foot Kmart one so apparently I was kicking him all night. So the second night I decided to sleep outside on the dunes. There are dingoes all over the island and they have plenty of warning signs about them but they only attack people they can smell the fear on. After a night of a southern hemisphere starry sky I saw dingo tracks all around my sleeping bag, haha. I had all my face parts and fingers, so no worries! The next day we did Lake Wabby which has really steep sand dunes that go straight into it. We brought a bodyboard so we could slide down into the water. That was tons of fun. You go pretty fast and if you dont fall off you skim over the water. We added a jump to up the ante. So after that we drove around a bit and headed home.

Rainbow Beach
A nice little quiet town, it's the gateway to Fraser so the backpackers and 4x4 tours make it busier. Only 1000 people live here. We sat around on the beach and did some body surfing, but we were mainly waiting for FRASER ISLAND...

NOOSA!
Yes we did have a very nice time here. Got in early morning and had a cooky shuttle driver from the bus station to the hostel. Then we walked around a bit, it's a resort town for sure, reminded me of rich places in Florida. We took sea kayaks out (free) on the Noosa river and checked out some sandbars. They were covered with these little crabs(hundreds of thousands!). They were ball shaped with spider-like legs and they knew when we were coming somehow. If we were within 15ft of them they would all run for it, I felt like Godzilla. They would bury themselves in the sand eventually to escape the wrath of us giants. They spiraled themselves down in the dirt. Too bad I don't have a waterproof case for my camera. Then Ethan and I went out into the ocean which the river ran into and did some kayak surfing. That was a blast. We did that for the rest of the day and now I'm at an internet cafe that took an hour to walk to (saw some nice sunset along the way). Guess whats next..........

Brisbane
A nice city all in all. We walked around for a bit. Saw some museums, art and a cool science/history museum (free of course). We saw the South Bank of Birsbane with some nice walkways and a artificial beach, which was not on the river but separate, it was like a small sandy pond, in the city. Then at night we saw a bit of a big rugby game at a nearby pub. Lots o' fun!

Byron Bay
Not much happened here, the boys were scared away by the cost of things, oh well. Waves are quite piddly so I'm gonna pass on surfing here. We saw the sun rise over the ocean, and we did plan some sweet stuff with a booking agent. 4X4 safari on an island, sailing through some islands, snorkeling and diving around the great barrier reef and then cape tribulation! I'm excited, look for pictures on my facebook account!

Coffs Harbour
Another nice area with little to do. We went for a walk and saw the beach. Then We got back and went on a horse trail ride. That was pretty fun. It was a half hour drive out of Coffs Harbour, into the scenic mountains. So I hopped on my horse Dawson and we set off with out guide. It wasn't as good as the incredible ride I had in New Mexico but it was fun, we got to trot and canter(a little slower than gallop) a bit (galloping is uncivilized apparently, but it's still my favorite). Our guide Nina took just the three of us around through some forrests and over some creeks and through some fields. There was one time when we were running our horses up hill and mine slipped or tripped or something and we both went down, haha. So that made things a little more exciting. Anyways, now we have to figure out where we are going next. I can't wait for Fraser Island...

Port MacQuerie...
This town is fairly boring. It's got a mall and stuff but we havn't done much here and we were here for two nights. We went to a Koala hospital which was interesting and rode bikes around town. Then last night we hung out with folks at this new hostel which aren't as cool as the Newcastle people. On to Coffs Harbour! (there may be horseback riding involved).

Hunter Valley!
Yay wine tours. I guess the Hunter valley is famous for some of it's wines. They do taste pretty good. We went to 5 wineries, the best were Tempus Two and Brokewood. Brokewood had my favorite wine of the day which was a shiraz that had a distinct smokey flavour to it because of wildfires the year the grapes were on the vine. Wicked sweet? I know. We went on the tour with another group from our hostel, it was a fun group of girls from Belfast and Kilkenny Ireland. So it was a good day in all. Later I went out with some other folk from the hostel from all over. Owen from Israel, Max from Canada, Tom from Australia, Andy from UK and a girl whose name I forget also from Canada. We had a lot of fun watching a big boxing match and running around town.

Newcastle and Blackbutt reserve
Nice little city. Did some bodyboarding (wicked chompy). Then we went to a animal reserve with koalas, kangaroos, emus, and tons of birds. More sweet pictures. Then we took the long way out of the reserve through the rainforest and came upon a valley FULL of fruit bats. It was rediculous how many there were, it was like an infestation. We were looking at them for a bit, then Marc got guano'd. So we ran for it because there was no place to hide. Seriously. Luckily escaped with our lives.

Bondi beach.
Nice trendy beach. We spent little time on bondi actually. Just to eat some food the night before (some nice and cheap fish and chips). There was a really nice cliffwalk along the costline with sweet rock formations(good for bouldering). Should be some nice pictures. Then a rich looking graveyard. It was pretty neat. We met some swedes and a really nice New Zealander who we hung out with for the rest of the night.

BLUE MOUNTAINS!
Awesome rainforest and mountainous terrain make a sweet hike. A nice view of the beautiful Three Sisters to start out the hike. We took most of the day to hike down the giant stairway and go through the valley over a landslide and to a highpoint called ruined castle. Lots of sweet pictures and 3 pairs of sore legs. Throw a little bouldering in there and you have one incredible day. We did our best to avoid the tours($$$), so we went into an outdoor gear store and asked about some nice areas. We bought a map and took off the next day. Well worth the price of the map and a lot more rewarding than taking tour buses and gondolas.