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 :-)