Emmy and I started the morning with a bit of shopping. Centrepoint tower is a block away and beneath that is lots of retail real estate. We didn’t buy anything, but we covered a lot of territory.

Hui came around just before lunch and we headed off to lunch at Darling Harbour. He took us to a seafood restaurant he had heard good things about called Nick’s. It was a nightmare experience the whole thing really. I’m not a big fan of seafood to begin with and there was just about nothing good I could say about this restaurant. The food was in ridiculously small servings, Emmy found a hair in her fish, I had to send mine back because it was stone cold raw in the middle… the menu was so over-priced and even their french fries sucked. I came close to puking, they brought me out new fish, but I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

From there the day went up though! We went to a video arcade, last time we were in Sydney Hui and I managed to win Emmy some soft toys out of one of those grab machines where you direct the claw thing. We decided to have another go, I didn’t have any luck, but Hui won two and got robbed of a third when the claw had it, carried it all the way over then dropped it just before the chute.

In the evening we caught a cab down to the Rocks for our Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. In all it took 3.5 hours, about an hour of that was dressing up and down and getting taught how to walk and climb the ladders. You aren’t allowed to take any cameras up or anything, but they take some for you along the way. I’ve attached ours to the blog. It was a great time of day to be up there, all the lights of the city buildings and the peak hour traffic at their shining best. The weather was great too, not very windy up there at all and a very mild night.

That concludes my series of blogs from this trip, tomorrow will be an early trip and an uneventful drive home. Then it will be back to the poker grind. I haven’t put very many hours in at all while we’ve been away. In fact I probably haven’t even play for the last week, I can’t remember the last time before this trip that I have gone multiple days without playing, let alone a week. Might take me a while to find my feet again, but in the end I think I’ll be better for the time away.

At night Emmy and I went out with her sister Ally and her husband Pete for her sister’s birthday. We drove around to their place, which is only ten minutes away, but it had me pulling my hair out with stress. I got stuck behind a bus and these dickheads behind me starting tooting me even though I couldn’t move. Instead of telling me my fly was undone, Ally decided to tell some long winded story involving statistics about people who fall overboard on a boat having their fly undone, and then ended by revealing mine was undone… she wanted that to get a mention in the blog.

Tomorrow is the last full day of our trip! We will be climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge… hopefully the weather holds off!

After we checked-in and got settled, my good friend Hui came over to hang out. The train station is on the same block as we are staying, so it is really easy for him to get here. Not long after that Emmy’s sister Ally and her husband Pete came over and we went out for dinner. We’ll be going out for dinner with them at Kings Cross tonight for Ally’s birthday. After dinner they headed off and Emmy, Hui and I went to the movies and saw Semi-Pro.

We actually stayed a little way out of Coffs Harbour in a town called Korora. We arrived late in the afternoon and left as soon as we woke up in the morning so we didn’t really get the chance to do much. The place we stayed at had a huge swamp in the middle of it and it was surrounded in a circle by all the ‘bungalows’.

One interesting thing did happen though. I went to check what the temperature of the swimming pool was and out of the corner of my eye I saw a really fast moving object in the spa. Upon closer inspection there was a lizard, about 15cm in length. It was struggling to swim and trying to pull itself out. I called back to Emmy to come and look, and she scooped it out and saved it (I didn’t really want to touch it). After it was out it hund around a bit and crawled all over Emmy’s bare feet and then ran off.

Our plane was running an hour late, so all our early morning rush was for nothing. When we arrived in Brisbane the drive out of the airport was pretty good, but finding a park in the Brisbane CBD was a nightmare. Eventually I found a 10 minute zone spot and rushed in to check-in so I could get access to the hotel’s underground car park.

By the time we were settled we really didn’t have much time before the footy to do anything besides go and get some food. It looked like it was going to be another rainy night at the Gabba, thankfully though the rain held off for the length of the match.

For our last full day in Cairns we decided to take it a bit more easy. We weren’t in any rush to get anywhere which was a nice feeling. Our first stop was back at Rusty’s Market in the CBD. Emmy wanted to buy a dress for herself and one for her sister than she had spotted the other day.

After a winding mountain drive to Mareeba we stopped at the RSL for lunch. Once we were filled up it was time to go to CoffeeWorks, something Emmy has been hanging out for the whole time in Cairns. I hate coffee, but I tried some of the squillions of varieties they had to taste test, didn’t enjoy it much. I did like the teas and chocolates they also produced on site, so it wasn’t all bad. We also got to see how they grow and roast the coffee beans as well as a massive collection of coffee/tea related paraphernalia. We bought some of the chocolates from the gift shop and Emmy got some coffee for her mum.

The road to Port Douglas was windy and narrower than I imagined, probably the hardest part of the days driving because of the volume of cars on the road. We only made a short stop off in Port Douglas to look at the shops and pick up some information on the Daintree region.

From Port Douglas it wasn’t too far to Mossman and then to the Mossman Gorge. More spectacular waterfalls and rain forest to walk through. The highlight of the gorge was the swinging bridge over the water. It was a shame that there were so many tourist groups around and we had to move on quickly to get out of there way.

After Mossman Gorge it was a fair drive to get to the Daintree Rainforest. There is no bridge over the Daintree River, so to get across you have to take a ferry. You drive onto the Barge, turn your engine off and remain in your car, it takes about 2 minutes. On the way back across we were stuck on the other side for over half an hour because the tide was too low for the ferry to travel across.

A short journey after the ferry is the Daintree Discover Centre. It’s a boardwalked section of the rainforest with lots of plant and animal markings. We got an audio tour to go along with our admission and that had lots of interesting information as we walked along. The best part of the discovery tour was the 23 metre ivory tower that extended up into the canopy of the trees. The unfortunate thing about the tour was that we hardly saw any animal life.

Once we were done at the Discovery Centre we stopped for ice cream at a boutique Daintree Ice Cream farm. They had a range of fresh fruts growing as your drove in and the flavours were really unusual, like Wattle Seed. We then proceeded to Cape Tribulation for lunch. I had the beautifully cooked Tempura Barramundi.  Cape Tribulation was so isolated that I wondered how the restaurants there make money, but sure enough after we sat down the lunch time crowds started to pour in. On the way to the Cape we had to cross a creek that was overflowing onto the road, and the little Toyota Corolla only just made it, on the way across we saw the RACQ rescuing someone who had become stuck. So it was a relief when we made it across on the way back.

We pretty much drove the journey home straight, only stopping once at Coconut Beach. There was not a soul in sight and we had the whole beach to ourselves. I tried to crack open some coconuts, but even on the sharp rocks I wasn’t strong enough.

The day started with me catching the bus into the city and picking up the rental car that I had booked. It’s a maroon Toyota Ascent Sport and we’ll have it for the rest of the stay. Once I got back to the apartment with it we packed a picnic lunch and headed off for Crystal Cascades. When we got there no one was in sight and there were these warning signs for stringing trees and if you get stung call 000 immediately. So we headed down a dirt path being careful to avoid foliage along the way and eventually reached a nice spot to have our lunch by a creek.

After lunch we took the esky back to the car and went down  a paved path this time, this one was well clear of trees and stinging leaves. We walked up to the top of the Crystal Cascades, which are a long series of waterfalls. Along the way we saw people swimming, and by the the time we walked back that had very nicely left so we could have the water all to ourselves.

We’d worked up quiet a sweat on the walk because it was all uphill on the way, following the water upstream. The rainforest air was so humid and thick that deep breathes were troublesome. So when we finally hit the water it was refreshing. It was really clean water, the only challenges were getting in and out on the shark and unstable rocks and pebbles and also avoiding being swept down stream by the currents.

Later on tonight we are driving into town to go to the night markets, something Emmy has been wanting to do since we got here.

Today was our SeaStar Cruise out to Michaelmas Island/Reef and Hasting Reef. The cruise had about 30 passengers, which was nice and intimate and felt less commercialized than other tourist attractions. We left the wharf at 8:15am and it was about 90 mintues out to out first stop, Michaelmas Island/Reef. I don’t usually get seasick, but it was really choppy and I must admit I did start to feel a little ill. Strangely, on the way back the water was 5x as rough, but I was fine so I guess its just a case of acclimatising. The catamaran anchored about 80 metres off shore from the island and we had the option either to swim in or get taken in by dinghy. The island was completely over run by birds and their noise was headache material so we didn’t spend long there and headed out into the water. From the island they ran a snorkling tour which took us around the reef and pointed out interesting fish and coral. After the tour we were able to snorkel and explore on our own for a bit.

Once everyone was done on the reef (after about 2.5 hours of exploring) they served up a buffet lunch inside the boat. Because it was rough they waited until after lunch to start driving towards Hastings Reef. Hastings Reef was a lot better than the first stop, not that Michaelmas was bad or anything. Hastings was a lot bigger, it featured 10metre high walls of coral and deep caves. At this stop we boarded a glass bottomed boat and did a quick tour around the reef. It was good, but the boat scares away a lot of the fish. On our snorkeling tour we saw a sea turtle and got to swim along with it for a bit. Emmy and I were the only ones to hold onto a pineapple sea cucumber. It is a big sea slug type thing that suctions onto you.

The day didn’t start very well at all. We went to the bus stop for our 7:50am as per our instructions and by 8:15 nothing had shown up. We got the owner of the apartments (who had booked our tour) to give the tour operators a call. Turns out there had been a major stuff up with their computer system and we had been wiped off the map. Instead of getting the shuttle bus to the railway station the owner of the tour company came and picked us up herself and rushed us to the train. We didn’t make it on time, but luckily the train was running late.

That was the only stressful part of the day though and the rest was very enjoyable. The train ride wen for about an hour and a half with one stop off point at a massive waterfall. It’s journey started just outside of Cairns and took us to a small vilalge called Kuranda. There were lots of little shops, markets, wildlife attractions and bushwalks to do.

We started off by doing a small walk through the forest. We found a nice creek to take our shoes off and relax at. After our walk in the humidity we were ready to relax and have lunch. We went to the Rainforest Cafe and sat outside on their balcony that overlooked the rainforest. Emmy had ‘the best banana smoothie she has ever had’ and the food was good too, a lot better than yesterday’s debacle that is for sure.

The SkyRail was the best part of the trip for me, it’s a gondola cable way that suspends over the rain forest that takes you 7.5km. There were two stations to get off at to take pictures at lookout points and it was really unique to be amongst the canopy so far up. On the journey back we had no troubles with our shuttle bus, which was a relief because we were too tired and hot to deal with anymore dramas.