Cairns and a bit of Outback and finally Simon catches a fish

Simon and Bernie fishing

Stayed at the Greenhouse Backpackers place for 2 nights, which is the first time we have even stayed at a backpacker place and to be honest i was expecting it to be an awful room but it was massive. Really pleased about this, also loved the atmosphere of the place.
First night we were in Cairns we got pretty drunk, and it was Simons turn to have a hangover the next day. We pretty much wrote the next day of as neither of us were up for doing anything. The only thing i did was to look around the second hand exchange places to find lonely planet books for our trip ahead (i dont want to pay the aussie prices for new books) We did however book on a Crab and Fishing trip with our new friend Bernie (we met him the night before sat in the Irish bar, hes english backpacking around and works as an architect). So whilst the other backpackers we were chatting too, was arranging to go skydiving we decided to go fishing :-) in the evening. Which we did and it was great. Simon finally caught his first fish. Its still 2-1 to me though. This was the first time I had ever used a proper fishing rod and i wasnt very successful. I did at one stage manage to wind in the reel from someone elses rod with my rod by catching their reel, however my biggest catch was the other side of the boat. I even left it in the water for 5 minutes and reeled it back in to find out that i had managed to get the hook stuck on the other side of the boat at the back. Fairly embarrassing. The crabs we caught were absolutely enormous, the video we recorded shows the crab in simons basket grabbing hold of a coke can and crushing it with his claws. Wouldnt like to touch that.
So the next day, could have been spent snorkling in the great barrier reef or going to Cape Tribulation exclaiming at the rainforest, but we decided to do the opposite to what you would normally do in Cairns and drive East and try and find some of the outback that had proved so elusive(WOTD) to us. So we got up early hired a 4x4 and set off driving 200k to a place called Chillagoe http://www.tablelands.org/chillagoe.html . The drive we knew was going to be the most exciting part of this journey as 18k of it, is on unsealed roads and this meant bouncing up and down along red sand roads, being overtaken by infrequent non-rental 4x4's (We didnt want to cause any damage on ours as the excess is so high), doing the lifting of the arm to acknowledge a driver on the other side of the road. They wave at me but not Simon. As we drove it got less and less rainforesty and more and more drier. It was great seeing it like this, with cows trying to walk across the road. We even saw Cowboys on their horses rounding up the different coloured cows. Oh yes and the other thing to mention is the termites mounds, enormous and everywhere, we had to stop and get pictures of us standing next to a termite mound that was taller then us (not that difficult to find).
Once we got to Chillagoe, we did a cave tour - amazing stuff but back to nature again it was the bats, the queensland nuisance toad, and the huntsman spider. Did u know that a Feral Cats each bats, when a bat poos, the cockroach then eats it, cockroachs are eaten by Huntsman spiders and then other things eat the spiders.
At the tourist information centre we were given a map of Chillagoe and the attractions. This includes the rubbish tip (bit short of attractions). A shop where I had a Chillagoe special burger, which i was hoping may have had some sort of Chilli on it, but it was a burger with absolutely everything on it, including beetroot.
The next stop in Chillagoe was the historic copper smelter ruins, that didnt really do anything for us. We did however get recommended to find the bp garage and look at the cars around the back. I did kind of imagine that this was going to be some posh garage with some lovely shiny cars around the back all lined up nicely. Nope it was this old mans yard who was about 80 who had a stack of restored Ford cars and wagons and then a stack of scraped cars. He was a very interesting man, who talked very strangely but seems to be a local legend.
In the evening we drove back to Cairns and stayed in the cheapest motel place we have stayed in in Aussie called Bayview hotel. It was hanging but it was $65(£30). We did however spend $80 on our last Aussie meal. I had Kangaroo fillets, and Simon had pork wellington???.
Loved Cairns, loved the Outback, loved in the end Aussie. Hope to come back at some stage to see Andy/Allison and Amy and/or to go to Josephines and Nicks wedding that may happen in a couple of years. Roll on ASIA.