So we arrived in Darwin on the 19th March. People told me that there's nothing in Darwin, and they were right. It's a very small, sleepy town. (It also p*ssed rain for the 4 days we were here). Darwin is in the 'Northern Territory' state (NT). They have a saying that NT stands for 'Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday, Not Thursday'. If you're looking for a place to retire when the blood pressure's high, this is it.

It was good to relax here for a few days though. We spent a day on a tour to Litchfield National park. We went up the Adelaide river (full of crocs) in a biggish tour boat. They hang porkchops over the side on a rod, so the evil reptile bastards jump right out of the water to grab them. Pretty amazing & weird seeing them jump out so far like they were weightless. They did a raffle thingy to get some of the passengers to feed them, & my ticket got called. So I had to go up & feed one of them. I was hoping to tease her (mostly female) for a bit but she was too quick & just snapped it right off.

 

Later in the day, we went off to different waterfalls & saw a few different things, including a 9m termite mound. One of the waterfalls is the source of what you'd call 'rapids'. There's a pool someways down to go swimming in, which we did. You just have to watch you dont go too far into the middle & get swept away.

Of course, Cliff noticed a fallen tree across the river further downsteam (it looked pretty shallow there) & had a brainwave. Quipped with my now infamous 'Come on lads, whats the worst that can happen?' (like the Dr. Pepper ads, this always spells disaster), I convinced Sparky that we let ourselves gett dragged downstream. It looked shallow enough to stand up in, but even if we couldnt, we could grab onto the tree (just like in films). So we pushed off into the current & realised after 2 seconds that we were f*cking idiots. We got dragged over the rocks at alarming speed (our poor shins) & smacked into the tree (not shallow there after all), with the current trying to pull us under the tree. After struggling for a bit, we pulled ourselves back to shore. It was funny afterwards though, when the grapefruit sized bruises on our chests from the tree had healed.

 

So from Darwin, we flew to Cairns. This place was bigger than Darwin & full of backpackers. We stayed here for a few days, looked around & had a few drinks each night. It's a nice place. We were lucky with the weather, we arrived the day after it cleared up. They had the wettest week in a long time. A lot of people were stuck here because of floods everywhere.

 

From here, we went on a day tour out to the Great Barrier Reef & snorkelled for the afternoon. This was amazing, I can't even consider how many species of fish & coral we saw. Unfortunately my digital camera isnt waterproof, so I have no photos of this.

 

We left Cairns after a few days & headed a little ways south to Mission Beach. We had skydiving booked here, a tandem dive from 10,000ft, where you land on the beach. The weather wasnt great though, so we spent the whole day sitting around waiting for it to clear up. Then they told us 'right, ye're going in 10 mins'. We signed the 'If you die, its tough sh*t' papers, but then the weather turned & they called it off. We'll do it further down the line elsewhere instead. We might wait till New Zealand, we heard thats the best place to do it.

 

The next day we went whitewater rafting on the Tully river. This was the best day ever, great fun & brilliant weather. The normal tour wasnt enough for us, so us fools had to sign up for the 'Extreme Team'. Our tour had 19 people on the bus, and (its a small world) there were 3 lovely Kilkenny girls there, Elesia, Nessa & Sharon. They were lovely. Turns out Elesia used to work with a friend of mine from home, & Sharon knows Marks family. T'is a small world indeed. There were 6 to a raft, so we decided to join up & make the only & best Irish team. (We really were as we were the only raft on out tour not to flip over). 

If anyone ever has the chance to do whitewater rafting, do it, its great craic. Some of the highlights were an 11m cliff jump into the water that me & Sparky did (you can see the trend developing here of our stupidity). This was scary, my heart stopped when I jumped over the edge. I made the mistake of looking down when I jumped (instinct to see where I was landing, I guess). My eyeballs felt like they were knocked to the back of my head, and were all bloodshot for a while.

Later, there was a steep waterslide that lands into a deep pool, so our guide encouraged us to get out of the raft & go down this bodily. We all did this & it was good fun. We started getting nervous though, when he told us that you get shoved 3m under in 0.5s, so you have to equalize before & during going under (hold your nose & blow to balance pressure in your ears). Most of resurfaced after 4 secs (thankgod for lifejackets), but Emmet managed an impressive 7 or 8s.

We were supposed to get straight onto a 7hr bus ride to Airlie beach after the tour, but one of the guides got thrown over hard & injured (fractured ribs be the sounds of it). We had to hold up for a while while someone came & replaced him. So it looked like we were gonna miss our bus (& definitely not be able to collect the photos below that the tour takes during the day), so the girls said they'd give us a lift the next day in their van, as they were going that way anyway. We happily agreed & stayed an extra night in our hostel. Did I mention they were lovely?

 

So from there we stayed in Airlie beach for a few nights. Its a nice place, right on the beach (as the name suggests), plenty of pubs, and a cool lagoon just onshore. More importantly, this is where you access the Whitsunday Islands from. We got a day tour out here yesterday, you see the islands, hike to a viewpoint, have lunch on WhiteHaven beach, & snorkel in the reef. Whitehaven beach... I never thought the scenery of Thailand would be beaten, but it was. The beach had thousands of soldier crabs too. We had the sense to but an underwater disposable camera for the snorkelling, so we'll get them developed & scan them in for the site. I also licked an ants ass here too. The guide pointed out these huge ants that naturally taste of lemon, so we all had a lick.

 

Last night we got a 13hr bus ride (nasty) from Airlie beach to Hervey Bay. Here is where you reach Fraser island from. Tomorrow we head off for 3 days camping in a 4x4 with 8 others, should be good fun.