Australia Update

Hey Folks!
Well it hasn't been a terribly long time since I posted last, but it feels like lots has happened. I guess I'll just start from the beginning.

A couple of days after our rafting trip we headed up to Cairns and did a day out on the Great Barrier Reef scuba diving and snorkelling. It was a fantastic experience, and the visibility was great. We saw a massive clam, a ray, lots of tropical fish and corol, and Nemo!

I think it was the next day that we headed up to Cape Trinulation and the Daintree Rainforest for a three day tour. The Daintree rainforest is a World Heritage sight, as it is the oldest rainforest in the southern hempishpere - 250 million years old! We also went on a cruise on the Daintree River and saw 3 crocodiles. Then, on the third day we were laying on the beach when we had a cassowary pass by us. For those of you who don't know what a cassowary is, it's a massive tropical bird (we're talking anywhere up to 2 meters in height!) that is endangered and also very deadly. If provoked or cornered they are capable of killing humans with their massive claws. So basically this isn't the kind of bird you want to run into, and we had one walk right past us! If you check out our picture sight we posted pictures of it on there.

On July 5th we flew from Cairns to Sydney where we had possibly our best couchsurfing experience yet! We stayed with a guy named Trevor, and his roomate Dave. Their place was a total party house, but they had it absolutly spick and span for us. They totally went out of their way to make sure we had a comfortable place to sleep and they had a group of friends that were over at the house as much as the rest of them, and we got to be really good friends with the whole group. They took Brin and I out on the town for Brin's birthday, and we had a blast. We pretty much hung out with the "Club 10 Cronulla Crew", as Brin and I called them (they live in a suburb called Cronulla, and their house is named Club 10), the whole weekend, and when it came time to leave we really didn't want to! We invited them to all come to Canada, and some of them swear they'll be there in the next year. So who knows, maybe the rest of you will get to meet them too!

So the actual reason we were in Sydney was to see the Live Earth concert. It turned out to be a stellar time, and while Jack was a bit of a let-down, Missy Higgins and the John Butler Trip put on a stellar performance. But, believe it or not, neither of them were better than the final act of the night: Crowded House. We're a bit ashamed to admit this, but we had no clue who Crowded House was before they came on stage. We thought they might be some techno DJ or something - we seriously had no clue. Turns out they're an old Aussie band that spilt up 10 years ago but got together just for the Live Earth concert. The crowd went nuts when they came on stage, and within minutes Brin and I recognized their songs. It was an amazing experience, and we were so glad we got to be a part of it.

Early on July 10th we flew to Melbourne and returned to the house of Terry, Ruth, and Dave Brain - the people we stayed with when we were last in Melbourne. It's been a wonderful stay here, as Ruth takes care of us very well. Anything we need, she's on it! And she has supper prepared for us every night. It's been a great base to get all of our stuff sorted out for the next part of our trip, and our days here have mostly been spent running errands, getting our taxes sorted out, closing our bank accounts...all that boring stuff that has to be done after you've been travelling and working in a country for 7 months!

So on Saturday it's off to New Zealand. Brin has decided to skip it and head straight to Asia, and I've decided to backpack around the two islands for 2 1/2 weeks and leave to Asia on August 1st. We're hoping to meet up for the last couple weeks of our trip in Thailand before returning home on November 4th.

So that's all for now folks! Hope you're all enjoying the lovely summer weather back home!