Cairns

The semester is already over! After classes ended and before my exams started, I managed to fit in a lot of adventure! Two nights before I left for Cairns, there was one last Weerona College bash, $20 prom. It was called that because your outfit for the evening had to cost less than $20. As you can imagine, there was a lot of thrift store shopping going on around here. Everyone looked well... very interesting! I managed to find a child's fairy costume to wear as a top for $5 and some very loud pink pants. Needless to say, it was a very fun night.

To continue the end of semester celebrations, I met my friend Melissa and her brother in Sydney for the most fantastic Japanese meal ever. We had seven courses banquet-style and then green tea cheesecake for dessert. After that, we went to the Ice Bar where everything is completely made of ice! It was an evening full of new and interesting places.

The next morning, I had to get up very early for my flight to Cairns (pronounced cans) in Queensland. I went with 3 American friends that I met here, 2 of which also go to Madison. We continually amaze the Aussies with how much we travel, they don't see the need to go very far from home. Once in Cairns, we picked up our fantastic rental car from 'Cairns Older Car and Ute Hire'. Isn't she a beauty?!

It was cheap, it ran, and they allowed me to drive it eventhough I am under 21 (the standard rental age here). We had to go pretty slow up hill and there wasn't power steering, but it got us where we needed to go. Right away, we drove to Palm Cove just north of Cairns to go kayaking. We had a great afternoon kayaking around the islands and reefs, even getting out to snorkel and look for stingrays and pufferfish in the shallows. On one of the islands, we stopped for a snack, including local bush-tucker of green ants! They tasted very citrus-y and sour, but were good; if I were without normal food, they would be a very tasty meal. After a great start to the trip, we drove up to Port Douglass where we spent the night.

The next day was dive day at the Great Barrier Reef! On the way out to the reef, we learned everything we would need to know to do our introductory SCUBA dives. I was really nervous, but the guide was very nice and once we finally got in the water, I was fine. There was a lot to think about at first, but once I looked around, it made up for the awkwardness of the equipment. The reef is amazingly large and there were tons of tropical fish everywhere. There were little Nemo fish and large parrot fish, but unfortunately we didn't see any sharks or turtles.

The day after that, we spent the whole day in the rainforest. First was river drift snorkeling in the Mossman River. Since the water was pretty cold, we wore full body wet suits and drifted down the river through the trees, sometimes looking in the water and other times just enjoying the new scenery. Then, we drove up to Cape Tribulation to go jungle surfing, or zip-lining. I did five lines through the canopy, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and once up-side down! I loved the fast one and would have done it a bunch of times if I could have. That night, we drove back down to Cairns to stay at one of the huge hotel-style hostels there.


After all of our adventures, a day at the beach was just what I wanted. We found a quiet beach just north of Cairns, where I fed my new found Twilight addiction. After another half day of exploring Cairns and shopping, it was time to come back to Wollongong for final exams. I only had two exams and have been finished for a week now. Although I am one of few people left at the college, I am happy to still be in Australia. The semester has gone by way too fast!