Last time I posted, I was waiting for my Mission Beach job to finish. Thankfully it has finally ended, and I have been relishing the non-use of water taxi's in my daily life for the past week.

I have spent the past few days back in Cairns, where up until a couple of days ago, the weather was still shite, causing me much Rage, as apparently it is still hotter at home than here.
Luckily it cleared up enough for me and Ness to go diving on the Barrier Reef, where unfortunately we messed up our second dive, choosing to use a guide for our first one, and stupidly thinking we knew enough to go on our second dive alone. What ensued was much getting lost and going up to the surface to find out where we were, signaling to the ever increasingly confused boat crew that we were ok, and going down again. Only to get lost again.

But we hired out an underwater digital camera and got quite a few decent shots (and more than a few of us pissing about on the sea bed) so I'm not too bitter about the getting lost debacle.

I am now on my last day in Cairns, hopefully the last day I will ever spent here in my life, as it is a bloody small town with not a lot to do, unless you're an alcoholic or a diver. It is also full of what I like to call "Crazies", I have counted about 12 of them in the past few week. They range from a guy I dubbed "Jesus of Suburbia" - dresses in rags and wanders round with some sort of a staff and crown on his head - to a Fijian guy who offered to 'buy' Ness and I for $200. When we fled the bar we were at whilst he was buying drinks, we went separate ways, and the guy actually caught up to Ness and pinned her against a wall. Fortunately she managed to talk her way away from the guy, but I have been put off going to Fiji for life.

With our money from the Mission Beach job, we have bought flights to Darwin, where I am hoping it will actually be hot and sunny, not hit-and-miss sun and rain like Cairns. If the weather is shite there also, I may be on the first plane home.

Greetings from Australia! Thought I might update on what I've been doing the past six weeks.

I spent 5 weeks in Sydney, staying with Ness's brother and his family. Dave has an 8 month old son, Henry, and he provided 90% of our entertainment whilst we were staying there. He's a great kid, but a bit ahead of his time, he keeps trying to walk when he hasn't learnt to crawl yet. That's what you get for being the son of two scientists.

We've been doing the odd tourist thing in Sydney, seeing the Opera house and that, and I managed to get myself bombarded by cockatoos whilst in the Botanical Gardens. They were tame enough to eat from my hand, but got a bit too eager, and saw me feeding them apple as an invitation to sit on my shoulders and head. Luckily I never got pooped on once. They remind me of the pet cockatoo I had when I was little, and oddly, I think they were all way more tame than Charlie ever was. Probably because he was caged up for 22 hours a day, poor lad.

Dave and Fiona like to ramble in the countryside a fair bit, so we were taken to loads of interesting non tourist spots, and camped out in a national park where we were attacked and abused by possums all night, and parrots all morning - they were all after our food, greedy buggers.

We flew up north to Cairns as there is usually guaranteed sunshine up there, but even the weather there has been a bit shit. We had a couple of nice days spent by the hostel pool, but Ness and I both landed a cushty job in a place called Mission Beach. We are now cleaning up the hotel part of a posh resort on Bedarra Island - a place so posh that people like Kylie and Jude Law have stayed there. We are getting paid pretty well, and have free lunches, but I am started to get annoyed with the job as we have to take a water taxi to Bedarra every morning at 7 am from Mission beach. The taxi is a right bastard, and we are always left on the beach waiting around til it turns up, and it doesn't actually land anywhere, just sits off the beach so we have to wade through the water to get onto it. This means I turn up to work every morning soaking wet, and get home from work soaking wet. I am getting sick of putting my knickers in the tumble dryer at the hotel, so I am praying that this job finishes soon. Ness has already buggered off to Cairns because Mission Beach and it's weather are so shite, fingers crossed I get to leave tomorrow too. I am sticking it out for one more day as I am getting $20 an hour, which is 8 pounds-ish. It's actually the best paid job I've ever had, which is sad.

Anyhoo, this is me finally up to date. I've uploaded a couple more pictures onto my flickr site, the address of which is in the post below. I'm off to enjoy some more of the lovely Mission Beach rain. This means I will be getting drunk :)