The morning of Thursday, December 19, I got up at the abhorrent hour of 5:00am to get to the airport for my 6:50am flight to Canberra. Veronica dropped me off and said goodbye, and I thought I was in good time -- until the woman at the check-in informed me that the flight departed from the INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL. You're supposed to be there for ( Read more... )

I'm working on the Canberra post right now, but I just remembered I have a couple miscellaneous Cairns photos to share still.

This is a St. Andrew's Cross Spider that was on Roni's fence.

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New Years resolution #1: Catch up on the blog! At least this is the last post about Cairns... this one is lots of text and only a few photos, for a change ( Read more... )

On December 12th, Veronica, Greg, Lily and I drove to Townsville for them to help Veronica's mum pack to move (to Cairns) and for me to go on the only beach-canter-and-ocean-swim horseback ride I could find on the east coast. My mum later told me that she thought three hours was a long way to drive for that (even though she understands my love of ( Read more... )

I woke up on the 10th without much of a plan but a lot of pain from the rough horseback ride the day before. My shoulders hurt, my abs hurt, my thighs hurt, my seatbones hurt... all I could think of was wanting a warm bath or a hot tub. Then I remembered that I had heard about some natural hot springs in the area, at Innot. I headed in that ( Read more... )

Hello and happy Boxing Day to those who "celebrate" it! Let's keep the "box" in Boxing Day by recycling the boxes our presents (and cheaply acquired sale items) came in, eh ( Read more... )

On Sunday, December 6, I gave in to temptation and took the Kuranda Scenic Railway train to... you guessed it -- Kuranda. Even though I had already been there by car, I have a bit of a fascination with trains and so thought it would be worthwhile to take the train up for the experience. It can be caught right in Cairns or at the Freshwater ( Read more... )

I flew from Cairns to Canberra yesterday and already have some fun things to tell, but I am going to try to catch up on the Cairns entries before I post anything about this leg of the journey ( Read more... )

Despite having constant access to the internet since being at Veronica's (and a flat surface on which to place my laptop - that's right, I no longer take anything for granted), I have been slacking on updating this thing, mostly since I've been out nearly every day and too tired to write or edit pictures in the evening. If I don't catch up soon, ( Read more... )

On Tuesday I ventured out on a daytrip, north to Port Douglas and beyond to Mossman Gorge and Daintree. Beyond that I would have had to take a ferry across the Daintree River, so I capped it there since I didn't want to be driving back in the dark either. The road to Port Douglas is one of the world's most scenic ocean drives, gripping the coast ( Read more... )