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At Cairns, while enjoying some time relaxing by the lagoon and planning our next few days we met a new friend, Jono, who I've now been travelling with for several weeks. Sitting on a wall by the sea we discovered that we had both just graduated in science degrees, were starting teach first next year taking a gap year on the way and had both just done the same trek in
Nepal. It was enough coincidences to keep us chatting long enough to decide to hire a car together along with Sarah and drive on up to Cape Tribulation, the most northerly you can go on the East Coast on sealed roads, after that its a 4wd adventure.

Having arrived in Cairns on a sunday we spent monday chilling out and getting organised and then headed up on the tuesday. It was a meagre 1.5 hours up the coats first to a place called mossman to swim in their famous gorge full of rapids that turned out to make a pretty bumpy waterslide! We also bumped into a bunch of 4 kiwi guys who had been in our hostel the night before and we seemed to have the same sorts of plans. From Mossman we carried on up to the cape stopping only for some freshly made icecream from local fruits (including the 'chocolate pudding plant') and then on to our campsite. The receptionist happily told us happily that even though the area is renowned for its killer saltwater crocs and literally lethal jelly fish (including a close relative of the portuguese man of war) she regularly runs in and out of the water and we ought to give it a go! She also let us know that the legendry cassowary had been seen about our camp, a bird the sixe of an ostrich with black and blue plumage we had been looking out for all day! Unfortunately we didn't spot a cassowary but on the other hand nothing ate us or stung us to death so overall I think we came off well. The afternoon was spent wondering through boardwalks in the rainforest and the the evening was spent making camp fires with the kiwis and the star gazing on a stunning deserted tropical beach, it was a moment when you have to pinch yourself that its still real.

After the cape myself and Jono dropped Sarah back in town as she was on a quest to Tasmania to refind her true love whom she had met 2500km further south and headed into the Atherton Tablelands. It is an area of high ground inland of Cairns full of picturesque lakes, waterfalls and wild life. The first night as we drove around the lake looking for a campsite a stunning crimson sunset was followed up by what looked like a trail of lava across he hill. It took a moment to realise that what we could see was several mile of forest fires!

Although we did eventually find an open campsite the peace did not last long as I woke up half way through the night with an eye so swollen I could hardly open it! In the morning we delayed our trip to the Tablelands to go via Atherton hospital where we sat in the waiting room and ate cereal with long life milk out of plastic bowls with 2 of the jokers from a pack of cards as we had forgotten our spoons. It was I think perhaps my most quintessential backpacker moment so far. The mystery of the swollen eye was solved after the long ditherings of a plump junior doctor by a House like figure who strode in trailed by all the female stud

ent doctors in the hospital (not a big place) and gave a decisive run down of possibilities, problems and solutions, deemed a certain prescription suitable and swooshed out again.

We set off to explore, first stop the "Giant Curtain Fig Tree" of which we were both seriously cycical and both extremely impressed as a growth that Tolkein himself would have been gutted to have missed out of Lord of the Rings, had he got the chance to see it. This followed up by a series of giant waterfalls, some deep ethical discussions, a few tyre skids and the decision that this was quite fun and

we might aswell carry on travelling together so we booked back into the same youth hostel and got excited about diving on the Great barrier Reef the next day.

Diving was particularly exciting for me since I had only dived 6 time before (4 on my Open Water course) so although I was qualified I was far from experienced and these promised to be my first ever unguided dives. The reef is actually a couple of hours by boat off the coast of Cairns (or at least the good diving is) and so we settled in for our boat trip on deck, trying to tan on the waay to our first

dive site "labyrinth". I was guided afterall for this die as a group of us less experienced ones buddied up with each other and were led by a Dive Master incase any of us had forgotten the basics, and after diving we were allowed as long as we wanted snorkelling off the back, clad in the extremely sexy 'stinger suite', an all in one lycra creation designed to defend one against the tentacles of killer jellyfish which unfortunately roam these waters along with the killer crocodiles and killer sharks. I did have fun though playing with myunderwaater camera (see opposite) and the reef was often shallow and good for snorkelling too. It was at the second site though that I really had fun! Now allowed to roam free of a guide, I buddied up with Jono and his previous dive partner and we reeled about, somersaulting and exploring tunnels and crevices in the coral. It was like escaping the teacher on a school trip, except for...underwater, and in Australia.