Cairns...

After leaving Asia behind I start my time in Australia in Cairns. I stayed here for four days and managed to squeeze a fair bit into that time. My first full day I went on a day trip to Cape Tribulation famous for being the worlds oldest rain forest. We first stopped off at a wildlife sanctuary where I saw my first koala, they are so cute but really lazy sleeping for 20 hours a day! Then we got to hand feed some wallabies and see some kangaroos hopping all over the place. Next stop was Mossman Gorge where we had a quick dip in the water took some pictures of the amazing views and got freaked out by a spider the size of my hand! After a cruise on the Daintree river we stopped at a beach at Cape Trib then headed back to Cairns. Whilst in Cairns I also went white water rafting on the Tully river. Tully is famed for being the wettest place in Australia and has a statue of wellington boot 8 metres tall to celebrate this fact, 8 metres being the record for the most rainfall they had in one year. Driving down to the Tully river the destruction caused by the recent cyclone was obvious, trees had been striped completely of leaves and bark with some being ripped straight from the ground, some of the house had some pretty bad damage too, it was sad to see. The river guides had previously been starting the rafting from a lower point down the river after the cyclone as the water level had been to high but we got to be the first group to go from the top as luckily the water had dropped. Once teamed up and fully equipped with life jacket, helmet and paddle we got into our raft and got on our way. This was one of the funnest things I have ever done, however I was more than a little scared as we tore through the rapids with some of them being category 4 rapids with category 5 being the most dangerous. Going through one of the rapids one of our team got thrown from the raft but managed to hang on whilst we pulled him in, he was fine but lost a shoe so in an attempt to get it back we went a different way down one of the rapids which ended up with us getting stuck having to climb out and subsequently leaving the 5 of us stranded on a small rock without our guide hugging each other to stay on and not fall in. We had to each take it in turns to jump from the rock straight into the rapids to make it back to the raft whilst the other rafts laughed at us, I was terrified but soon found the funny side as we were back safe in the raft, I only wish someone had managed to get a picture of the 5 of us hugging on that rock! That night I moved hostels and had a few drinks with some news friends and got an early night as I had to catch my first Oz Experience bus the next morning at 6.15am.