Cairns & the Atherton Tablelands

When we arrived in Cairns from Magnetic Island, it was pouring rain. We were planning to camp, but were starting to realize that we might want to look for a drier option. Luckily, as we were getting off the bus, a girl asked us if we needed accomodation. We asked how much it would be and she said that it was $23 per person for a dorm but that we might be the only ones in the room since they weren't very full. She also had a car to drive us there so we could get out of the rain so that sounded good to us. The average price for a dorm bed in Australia seems to be between $20-$35 (which is why we've been staying in our tent nearly the entire time), so that seemed like a fair price. When we got there, though, the guy gave us a private room (shared bath) for $40 total which was a steal since privates are usually a minimum of $70. We were excited to be inside for a night, especially when it proceeded to downpour for the next 14 hours! We rented a car the next morning and set out to explore the Atherton Tablelands, an area outside of Cairns known for its rainforests, waterfalls, and beautiful countryside/farmland. Thankfully, John drove us out of the city--he was still getting used to being on the other side of the road AND the other side of the car, but I was grateful that I didn't have to drive in the city (my only experience driving on the "wrong" side of the road was on Fraser Island and there wasn't exactly any traffic).

We drove on insanely curvy roads through really amazing, lush rainforests and stopped at an aboriginal market along the way. We saw our first of 12 waterfalls along the "waterfall circuit" and stopped for coffee and chocolate at a coffee plantation along the way. We went to a peanut farm where we sampled and purchased some awesome peanuts and bought fresh fruit and vegetables from a road side farm. I tried really good (if slightly strange) fruit called Lychee for the first time. We hiked to a couple more waterfalls and saw an amazing curtain fig tree (pictures coming soon). We camped in the pouring rain that night, but stayed surprisingly dry in our tent :-)

The next day I drove through more gorgeous scenery and did a good job staying on the left side of the road (John may disagree on that one). We hiked on rainforests trails to more waterfalls--One of the trails we hiked on in the morning was really wet from all the rain and we kept having to pull leaches off our feet--EWWW!! We had a great lunch at a bio-dynamic dairy farm. At the dairy farm, we sampled cheese and yogurt and had the best milkshake we've had on this trip. The milkshakes here in oz are not like those in the states--they are basically just milk a glass of milk with a tiny bit of ice cream mixed in and they are extremely thin. This one was super thick and awesome (though we did have to pay extra to have them make it that way). We drove back to Cairns late that night, dropped off the rental car, and camped out in the Cairns airport that night since we had a 5:45am flight the next morning. We wish we would have been able to more time to spend in Cairns and the surrounding areas, but we had to book our ticket to Melbourne that day or it would have been a lot more expensive. Even though it was relatively short period of time, we had a great time exploring this part of Australia!

Milla Milla Falls

Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island was one of our favorite places on the east coast of Australia. The island was named by Captain Cook in 1770 who noticed that the island had a magnetic effect on his compass while sailing past. Magnetic Island is an aesthetically beautiful area with deserted beaches and granite boulders scattered everywhere around the island. The first night we stayed at a hostel and noticed a hillside of boulders across the street. The next day we climbed, explored the hillside and the beaches in the area around the hostel. The following night we camped on a beach hidden behind a huge fig tree. We observed quite a bit of wild life including Koala Bears and Rock Wallabies. The Rock Wallabies apparently are nocturnal judging by the amount of noise they make at night jumping around in the forest (especially by our campsite). We hiked to a World War 2 outpost which was built on the island to protect Townsville (the closest city) from invading enemy ships. Although the weather was begingin to get hot, humid and rainy, it was sad to leave such a great place and continue our journey up the coast.

Sailing in the Whitsundays

Whithaven Beach

Hey everyone-- Sorry we haven't written on here for so long! It's

hard when you have to pay for internet more often than not, but we're going to try to at least get caught up :-) After Fraser Island, we hung out in Rainbow Beach for a couple days and then headed up to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is a cool little beach town that is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands.

The Whitsundays are a gorgeous group of 74 islands in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. We booked onto a boat called the Apollo because some of our friends had been on it and said it was great, and because it included one free dive. There were 24 travelers (mostly backpackers and all really cool) and 4 awesome crew members on the boat--a female captain :-), skipper, chef, and dive instructor. The chef, Molly, was amazing--we had heard the food was good on the boat so we had high expectations, buy they were quickly exceeded. There were two of us on the boat that requested no red meat and one strict vegetarian (John was not one of them since he decided he wanted the steak we had heard about). I am also allergic to onions, and the chef was great about making separate meals for those of us "veggos" and making sure mine didn't have onions. She was so awesome!

Our trip was 3 days and 2 nights and consisted of sailing through the islands, getting out and enjoying beautiful beaches, and diving! We ended up doing the dive that was included and paying for an additional 2 dives-- one during the day and one night dive! The night dive was crazy-- I was really scared at first because it was so dark, but once we got down to the bottom, it was really amazing and peaceful. We had waterproof flashlights and you could only see where you pointed your light. The part of the reef we were on was a series of coral caves and caverns, and we had a great time swimming through all them. John and I were the only ones on our boat brave enough to dive at night :-), so it was cool to have the dive instructor all to ourselves. During all the dives we saw amazing fish and beautiful coral. We also saw a big sea turtle while we were snorkeling on one of the islands. Overall, we had a really great trip! I highly recommend hitting up the Whitsundays to anyone traveling in oz and definitely the boat Apollo :-)

Sunshine Coast

Hi all--- We're having an amazing time in Australia so far! From Brisbane, we took the bus up to a town called Maroochydore so that we could climb Mt. Coolum, the 2nd highest monolith in oz (after Ayers rock). We hiked to the top, climbed at Coolum Caves, and then camped (illegally) in Mt. Coolum National Park. We then took the bus to Noosa--we saw a wild koala while hiking in Noosa Heads National Park and camped at the most beautiful caravan park, right on the Noosa River--we were literally camped on the bank of the river which looks like a tropical paradise with white sand beaches, tourquoise water, and palm trees. Overall, Australia is way more beautiful and tropical than we expected! From a hostel in Rainbow beach, we did a self-drive, 4X4 camping safari trip to Fraser Island--the world's largest sand island and a world heritage site. We went to Lake Wabby, a sand dune lake and had fun driving on very intense, narrow, off-road tracks with 6 other really cool people from around the world. After 3 days and 2 nights on Fraser Island, we returned to Rainbow Beach and fed wild dolphins (It was Jenelle's first time seeing dolphins in the wild and she thought it was awesome)! We are now in Hervey Bay and our internet time is up so more to come :-)

howdy mates

Our first day in Brisbane was great. We explored the city and went rock climbing at kangaroo point next to the Brisbane river. To get to the climbing area we took a ferry to a small park in the downtown area. The climbs are illuminated by lights so its possible to climb at night. We bought a 45 day (hop on and off) bus ticket to travel up the coast from here to Cairns. The trip up the coast begins soon.

made it to "oz"

Hi all-- We arrived in Brisbane, Australia this morning after the longest flight of our lives. We departed from Billings on the 12th at 2:30, flew through Denver where we got to hang out with my best friend Heidi, then flew to LA where we caught our flight to AUS. Heidi upgraded us to 1st class for the 1st two flights so that was awesome. We flew to AUS on Virgin Australia and the flight was awesome except for the fact that it was 14 HOURS! With a flight that long and the time difference, we completely lost a day and arrived here today, the 14th. Our flight was actually to Sydney, but we got off in Brisbane for a layover and decided to stay because we were headed that way anyway. I had originally saw that our flight went through Brisbane and tried to book to there instead of Sydney but it was actually more expensive--weird how that works--so we just got off here anyway and it worked well. Next we are planning to head to the Great Barrier Reef and do some scuba diving!! We are really excited to be here. For any of you in Sydney, we'll be there at the end of our time in AUS so we'll see you then :-)

Getting ready for our departure

Hi everyone-- well this is my first attempt at "blogging." John and I have always joked about the idea of blogging, but after several of our friends started blogs while they were travelling and a million people asking us if we were going to have one, we decided it might be a good idea. As of today, John & I both have one week of work left--woohoo!!! Then we have to move out of our house (we're having a garage sale and selling everything we can't fit in our cars), complete our scuba certification (we have to do 4 open water dives in Jenny Lake--burr!!), and move everything to Montana. We'll be spending a little over a week in MT--My mom is getting married on Oct 4th (!!!), my cousin Val's wedding is the 10th, and we fly out of Billings on the 12th. Hopefully we'll have time in between the two weddings to go backpacking in the Beartooths :-) We have one-way tickets to Sydney and are planning to buy all our other tickets as we go. We are both really excited and I personally can't believe how close we are to our departure date. We have so much to get done before we leave! I guess that's it for now, but hopefully this will serve as a good way to keep track of us on our journey--especially for those of you who are going to meet up with us along the way :-)