Lucinda/Mission Beach/Cairns/Karunda

Above is a view from the skyrail that we got from Cairns to Karunda, a village in the mountains.

We visited the fantastic Australian Butterfly Sanctuary where the friendly butterflies land on you. This is the stunning Ulysses Butterfly.

We also visited Bird World and below are photos of a metallic starling before and after fluffing himself up.

Here's Nic being attacked by a parrot that took a liking to the toggle on his hat.

Here's us with Hogan at the Koala Gardens in Karunda. He smelt of eucalyptus. Below is me with some sort of snake.

We went on the scenic railway to get back to Cairns. Some bloke decided to ruin our photo!

We had a fantastic day.

On the way to Cairns from Townsville we visited Mission Beach and hoped we would see a Cassowary bird.

And we did - hurray! They are huge - the size of an emu.

Here is some of the stunning rainforest seen around this area.

Whilst out walking we saw this sleepy scrub or amethystine Python.

This is a 6km long jetty in Lucinda used for shipping sugar cane - there are miles and miles of sugar cane plantations all along the coast.

A wonderful 2 weeks at Auntie Mims

Above is a massive Christmas Beetle which arrived the same day as we did at Auntie Mims.

Below is me with Lakota, Auntie Mim's very huge, fluffy, gentle dog.

Below is me with my Auntie Mim. I hadn't seen her for over 20 years but we got on really well and she was so kind and thoughtful. Thanks Auntie Mim you're a star.

During our stay we visited a gold rush town called Charters Towers and stayed with Auntie Mim's lovely friends Kath and John. They were really hospitable and we had a great time.

This is the court house at a tiny mining town called Ravenswood. The people in the picture are also visitors. What a great beard!

This is one of the 2 pubs in the town - it's supposed to be haunted!

Here's the family.

Here is a gorgeous sea horse in the Townsville aquarium. They also have a turtle hospital here and they'd released 2 turtles that morning back to the wild.

We visited Magnetic Island and fed the wild but tame rock wallaby's.

This wallaby has a joey in her pouch - how cute!

This is the jeep that we saw Magnetic Island in with a family of dutch people and a lady from Texas.

This is Nic chilling out on Magnetic Island. It's a hard life!

We got to feed some lorakeets and as you can see we got covered in them. Luckily they gave us hats to wear - some more attractive than other! My Mum nearly wet herself she was laughing so much.

We watched the sunset on the beach with cocktails. It was my Mum and Dad's 44th wedding anniversary so it was nice to celebrate in style.

Here's the sunset.

Here's a cheeky possum that we saw on the way back to the boat.

We've had such a great 2 weeks and we can't thank Mim enough. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone yesterday as we don't know when we'll see my M&D again or where. We're now back in our van after spending 2 weeks in a proper house and it feels a bit weird. Please keep following us - life is an adventure!!!

Whitsundays Trip

Above is Whitehaven Beach. We had a morning chilling out - literally as it was quite cool!

Bwlow is me relaxing on board our boat.
Another spectacular sunset
This is a waterfall on one on the many reefs. They occur when the tide changes from high to low.

Another lovely sunset.

1770/Rosslyn Bay/Eungella NP/Cape Hillsborough NP

Not updated the blog for ages as we've been soooo busy having fun. Sorry guys!

After leaving Fraser Island we've been heading north along the coast. We went diving at the Great Barrier Reef (our first time) from a place called 'The Town of 1770' and had the most unbelievable day. We had to wait 5 days to go out diving due to high winds and the 2 hour boat journey to Fairfax Island was very choppy but well worth it. The skipper said it was the best day that they'd had all year and we saw about 12 humpback whales, a massive bull ray, a manta ray breaching next to the boat (incredible), dolphins and loads of turtles.

Here is one of the humpbacks tail slapping.
This is the beautiful Fairfax Island:

This is the beach at Rosslyn Bay. From here we did a one day trip on a small yacht to the Keppel Islands. We had a lovely sunny day and went snorkelling and swimming in the crystal clear water.
This is Middle Island. You can just see our yacht on the left.

This is the view from a lookout on Middle Island.

Here's me practicing my diving.

We left the coast for 3 days to visit Eungella National Park. We swam in the freezing water at Finch Hatton. Here is me driving through a ford in our van that we've name 'Pom Pom' as it has 2 POMs in it.
Here are 3 beautiful river turtles.

Broken River in Eungella is the best place in the world to see platypus and we were lucky enough to see them. They are so cute.



Here's us inside a tree on one of our walks in the rain forest.

We arrived back at the coast in Cape Hillsborough National Park. Here is a funny blue crab.

Here is one of the hundreds of beautiful butterflies that we've seen.


We also went on a 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. Nic and I were the oldest on board but we had a wonderful time and the age difference didn't matter. We went diving and snorkelling and saw all shapes and colours of soft corals, turtles and loads of pretty fish. We also did a night dive which was very scary but amazing. We saw loads of turtles going to sleep and huge Trevally fish that swim right into you! We also saw a 6 feet Moray eel swimming along below us - we were told afterwards that this was very rare - cool!!!

When we got back to dry land we all met up in a bar and had a ball. We danced the night away with the tall mad German, crazy Danish, the wonderful English, the Aussies and even the the french. It was our first proper night out for ages and it was great. Nic and I even got ID'd on the way in - how hilarious! Nic showed the bouncers his bald patch and I showed them my wrinkles as ID! By the end of the night so many of the youngsters we'd met kept telling us how inspirational we were and h0w in love we looked. I felt like I was 24 again and it was brilliant. I think we made some friends for life! We will put some photos of our trip onto the next post.

At the moment we our with my lovely Auntie Mim in Townsville chilling out in her beautiful home with her huge fluffy dog. My parents arrive here today and we'll be hanging out together for the next week or so.

Keep following. We miss you.

Cracow - Dad's birthday - 9th June

On my Dad's birthday we drove for 6 hours from Carnarvon Gorge to Cracow as we'd been told by some Aussies that the Cracow Hotel had a pub full of 'atmosphere'. The tiny town is full of miners and as all of the rooms at the hotel, and at the nearest motels 100km away, were full of miners Mum and Dad had to have another night in our van and me and Nic had another night in our little tent.

The night was hilarious. The pub was full of artifacts, photos and scribbles on the walls and you could spend a week looking at and reading it all. The locals consisted of drovers (cowboys/girls) and miners. They were all rough diamonds and so many of them bought Dad a drink once they'd found out that it was his birthday. We'd never heard so much swearing in our lives but as Mum said "you get used to it after a while". We sat around the fire outside and listened to their amazing stories, Dad did some magic which went down a storm and we had a fabulous time. Here are some photos to give you a taste of our night:


This is Blue with my Mum and my Dad wearing a replica Ned Kelly helmet. We all had a go at trying it on and it weighed a ton!

It was certainly a night to remember.