Well, obviously we have left Cairns. We worked there for about four weeks. Trev slaved away on the watermelon farm while I worked real hard on my tan. I actually worked quite a bit as well. I ended up worling two jobs, both waitressing, but one during the day and the other at night - no partying for me again!

Cairns was a great experience, although I did have some items stolen from the hostel including my black work pants and 3 pairs of underwear!!!! Who does that?! Anyway, I got to go underwear shopping, so that was fun.

We left Cairns and headed Norht to the daintree rainforest at Cape Tribulation. We spent three nights there. Cape Tribulation is on the ocean, with the Great Barrier Reef on its doorstep, while on the other side of the beach is rainforest. It was so beautiful. We did a number of walks throught the rainforests. We saw lots of birds and such. One walk we did was the toughest walk we've done so far I think. It was a sweltering 35 degrees, plus we were walking in the humidity of the rainforest! The walk was 7km straight up a mountain, ugh! We were so exhausted when we got to the top - we didn't even realize we hadn't even made it to the end. That's right we walked 4.5 hrs to catch the wonderful views we had heard all about and didn't even see them - oops.

From there we stopped back in Cairns for a night to get our last paychecks and say goodbye to our friends. They talked up into doing this pubcrawl, it was actually lots of fun. We went to 5 different bars, met some new people, got some food, participated in a couple contests and I even won one. I won a day cruise out to the reef, but couldn't use it since we were leaving, so I gave it to someone else at the hostel.

We headed inland a bit from Cairns to see even more rainforests. On our drive we saw these amazing fig trees. They were enormous. One was a Cathedral fig - it towered over all the other trees. The ohter one was a Curtain fig - which fell in a long row (rather than a circle araound a tree) making a sort of curtain.

We also did a waterfall tour - stopping to see 4 waterfalls on our way back to the coast. Because of the time of year, the falls weren't too spectacular, but still nice.

From there we headed straight to Airlie Beach where we did a sailing tour of the Whitsunday Islands. Going with our luck with the weather this year, we weren't surprised that it was cold, windy, rainy and choppy while we were on the boat for 3 days. It was so choppy most everyone felt nauseous and a few people actually got sick. It didn't help that the 'sailboat' boat was really just a glorified fishing boat with a mast attached to it. Once we got into the safety of the bays of the islands, itwasn't so bad, but it was still cold. Trevor suffers from seasickness, so he was feeling under the weather for most of the trip, but we did manage to have a good time. When the skies did clear up a little, we could see the islands. They we beautiful. The area was crystal blue water, green islands with white sand beaches. We got to go to one beach - Whitehaven beach - one of the best beaches we've seen (even though it rained while we were there).

When we returned to land, we had a few hours to rest and recover before heading to the pub for dinner and drinks with the crew from the boat. I think one of my favourite parts of the trips is the partying afterwards. We just went out and danced and had a great time.

In the morning we packed up and headed inland again to yet another rainforest. This one was famous for its platypus though. We read that the best time to view them it at dusk or dawn, and since we are not so good in the mornings, we headed into the rainforest just before dusk. As we walked along the wet rainforest floor, this little leech things would grab onto our feet. I was freaking out, but they didn't even bite.

We walked for quite a ways and didn't catch sight of any platypus, so we decided to turn around. To our surprise, we actually saw one on our way back! They are much smaller than I thought. I had pictured a seal size animal, but they are basically a large squirrel that swims. Apparently they are quite viscious though, so we kept our distance and just watched it swim around - so cool! By this time, it was getting pretty dark, so we walked back quite quickly, spotting a few massive cane toads and some glowing bugs on the way.

After our little adventure in the rainforest at night, we drove down the coast some more. We stopped at a few little beach towns along the way, my favourite being Town of 1770. It was so quaint - a quiet little town. We stayed right on the beach, watched the sunset before bed and took a dip in the ocean in the morning before packing up. That's the life.

That night we stopped at a little town that has a beach where turtles come to every year to lay their eggs. Apparently a turtle will return to the place where it was hatched to lay its own eggs. Thousands of turtles migrate to this one beach each year and for the low price of $11 we got to see a turtle lay her eggs in the sand (along with 70 other tourists). It was actually quite neat to see, though it was crowded with so many people. Too bad we won't be around when the little guys hatch and scurry to the ocean.

Our next major stop was Hervey Bay, our departure point for Fraser Island. Fraser Island is a huge sand island with a number of natural fresh water lakes and rainforests (didn't know rainforests could grow in sand, but anyway). We took this tour that had 3 4WD trucks travelling together, 11 backpackers in each without any guides. It was one of the the best experiences. The trucks were equipped with all our camping gear, so we just toured around the island stopping at various lakes for a dip. Our first stop was Lake MacKenzie - Amazing! The water was so clean and fresh you could just drink it - which we did. We stopped there again on our way back to the mainland.

We ate like kings having BBQ'd steaks and baked potatoes for dinner, we slid down huge sand dunes, we floated down a fast flowing creek and we saw wild dingoes - the Australian equivalent to wolves. Just an amazing time.

And you guessed it, when we got back we had a few hours to rest and relax before heading to the pub for dinner and drinks. Another good night had by all.

After Fraser Island we didn't really do much but drive down the coast and stop at a few beaches. And of course, most of the trip was cold and rainy. We stayed in Noosa for 3 days and it rained the whole time. We figured since we were getting wet anyway, we might as well jump in the ocean and learn to surf. It was a lot harder than those pros make it look. I wanted to be the next star of "Blue Crush 2" - not even close. I did stand up though - there are photos to prove it. Trev did really well. He liked it so much he tried again the next day, but didn't really make it any further in his skills, though he had lots of fun. I think that's what it's all about,just having fun with the waves.

The weather was still crappy, but we didn't have the time to sit and wait it out any longer, so we headed towards the Glass House Mountains, near Brisbane. While we were headed up the centre, way back in August, we met this guy who told us to go to the Big Pineapple while we were on the East coast. So we searched all over and finally found this Big Pineapple, it really was quite large. Anyway, he told us to get this ice cream thing so we did. It was called the 'Big Yum' and yes it was BIG! It had like 13 scoops of ice cream on top of some fruit salad with whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top - mmmmmmm. It was so big we couldn't even eat it all and the fruit was frozen by the time we got through all the ice cream.

We drove into the Glass House Mountains, and of course we couldn't see anything because it was so cloudy. We spent the night there and in the morning amazingly enough it had cleared up so we drove back out to the lookout and actually saw the view - it was definitly worth it. We then went to the "Australia Zoo" - Steve Irwin's zoo ( the crocodile hunter). It was actually really good. We got to see them run around with tiger cubs, feed some crocodiles, saw more free-flight birds, saw a huge galapagous turtle - 172 years old - the egg was brought over by Charles Darwin! We got to pet an alligator and we even fed the elephants. We skipped all the kangaroos and koalas that we had seen before.

We spent one night in Brisbane just so we could get an oil change done on the car, then we went to Surfer's Paradise - though we didn't do anymore surfing. We met up with a friend from Cairns and hung out on the beach for the day. That is wear we took the Christmas photo.

After that we pretty much headed straight to Sydney. It took about 2 days to drive down - stopping in Byron Bay for a bit to play in the waves.

When we got to Sydney we met up with Benny and Patty from Adelaide - can't believe they're still together. Anyway, they were staying in this hotel apartment thing and let us use their washer and dryer and let us crash there as well. We went out for dinner and drinks and had a really good time catching up. It was good to see some familiar faces.

The next day we headed out early and took the van to the carmarket to sell it. We also sorted out our accomodation for out last 2 weeks in Australia. Since it is Christmas time,the hostel owners think backpackers all of a sudden have a ton more money and they jack up the prices. It cost us $800 for 2 weeks!!! Though we are pretty much right on the beach.

It only took us 3 days to sell the car. It was such a relief to get rid of it, but at the same time kinda sad to sell our home. Like I already said, we bought the van for $3300 back in Marcha nd sold it for $4950!! Can't believe we actually made a profit - helps cover some fuel costs though.

Since we have sold the van, we have pretty much done nothing. We spent a fews days on the beach, a day at the mall getting some things before we leave and just spent the last 2 days at Trev's friends Steve's place. We had BBQ'd steaks 2 nights in a row, had a few drinks, played some crazy video games and drove out to the Blue Mountains (in the morning - not after drinking). The Blue Mountains were preety cool. They are a mountain range crating this canyon sort of thing, but full of trees and stuff, not like the barren grand canyon. We took this walk that brought us down then up over 900 steps each way - ugh! It was exhausting.

For Christmas we were supposed to spend the day on the beach drinking and having a BBQ, well like I've been saying, it's just our luck that Christmas was cold cloudy and super windy. We ended up spening most of the day inside, but we did have the most amazing turkey dinner. We met a few Canadians and Americans, the 7 of us had Christmas dinner together. It was really nice, something traditional since nothing else felt the same. I think it was the best christmas meal, I don't know what they did to that turkey but it was amazing. After cleaning up, we all passed out and met up again later for a night of drinking and chilling out.

So I guess that's it. We still have New Years, but we haven't made any plans yet. Don't want the weather to interfere. But we've had an amazing time in Australia. Doesn't feel like 9 months, but we are certainly excited to move on to our next adventure - Europe. I just booked our first couple night accomodation in a hostel in Rome, if it's going to be that expensive all over the place, then we may be coming home a lot sooner than planned :(

I know this posting is long enough, but just to summarize Australia:

*We drove over 20,000km (I drove about 150km)
*We went from Sydney to Adelaide (via Canberra) up to Darwin, across to Cairns, and back down to Sydney
*We only hit one wild animal, a laurakeet (a pretty green bird)
*We saw wild camels, kangaroos, emus, koalas, horses, goannas, turkeys, all sorts of birds, platypus, crocodiles, lizards & geckos, snakes, dingoes, badicoot ......
*Did lots of walks - the highest being 1800m in the Flinders Ranges
*Favourite state was Northern Territory
*Favourite National Parks: Kakadu, Litchfield and Katherine Gorge
*Favourite beaches: Whitehaven Beach(Whitsundays), Broad Beach(Gold Coast)
*Favourite adventure: scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef
*Favourite beer(Trev's opinion): Coopers Pale Ale
*Favourite city: Cairns - great friends

I will let you know how New Years goes and how our first few days in Italy turn out. I hope it's not too cold when we get there - but knowing our luck ...

Peace out for now and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Merry Christmas

Hey Everyone. We made it back to Sydney in one piece!!! Just wanted to send out a MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all. We love you and miss you. Christmas won't be the same but we'll try to have a good time anyway, hahaha!

And for some really good news, we sold the van yesterday. We bought it for $3,300 back in March and just sold it for $4,950! How awesome is that! Merry Christmas to us.

We'll give you a full update on the last month or two later, it's far too nice outside to be stuck in here on a computer.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

&

HAPPY NEW YEAR