Up to the Top

Lake Mackenzie on Fraser Island. Apparently voted the 7th best place in the world to go for a swim...whatever that means.

Me. Behind me, the Great Barrier Reef.

75 mile beach on Fraser Island, also acts as the highway around the island.

Danielle being attacked by Lorikeets, ha. It was all fun and games until one shat on my shirt, I have now been shitted on by a bird on 3 continents during this trip, can't wait for Africa!

Kangaroo that tried to kiss my camera, crazy little gaffers.

We decided to take full advantage of our fabulous living quarters and spent 5 nights in Noosa. One of the days we ventured over to Fraser Island, which is just off the coast and north a bit. It's the largest sand island in the world and is full of those typical paradise shots that you see on postcards. Saw some dingoes scouting around for little babies to eat and about a thousand types of birds, but for the most part it was just picturesque scenery. Saturday we bussed back to Brisbane and then flew up to Cairns. The great thing about Australia, is that somehow their long haul domestic flights are actually cheaper than buses...it makes no sense, but I'm not complaining. Cairns is quite a bit more tropical and warmer than any other part of Oz I've been to. As usual the people are all extremely nice and with the local wildlife, it helps support my favourite new pasttime of watching 3 foot bats each every thing in sight while having a few Victoria Bitters. Yesterday I headed out to the reef (whilst Dani sunned herself by the pool) and did three dives off the coast of Cairns. Didn't see anything too exciting, but there were tons of massive fish and some turtles. Was a little depressing to see the amount of dead coral down there, the other reefs I've dived in Central America typically looked much healthier. Seeing this, I grabbed two sea cucumbers and went to work protectin' it for the underwater camera, I know it was stupid to do without any backup, but it had to be done (I later found out that the underwater pictures were $16 each, which I obviously cannot afford...but everyone in my dive group was wondering what the hell I was doing, especially when I transformed the protectin' shot into an amateur underwater porn video, for those of you who know what sea cucumbers do when scared...well, you can see how this came about) . We have one more lazy day here in Cairns, which for some reason Im spending on the internet..., before we fly off to Sydney tomorrow for Dani to return to Vancouver *sniff* *sniff*.