April 03, 2003 from Oliver 

hey everyone

well the last couple days have prob been some of my most wicked days in Australia, so this is going to be a bit of a long letter, but ill do my best to keep it short.   me and aaron came up on sat night and I met his auntie and uncle and family, they got this wicked house just north of cairns in a place called kawarra beach or something.  anyways Sunday was already planned out when we got here, we woke up at 6am grabbed some beers and crub and set out on one of the greatest adventures....        
we hopped on Simons boat (Aaron's uncle) and headed out to the inner great barrier reef!!  35kms out we stopped at a little sand island, called yupollo K, right in the middle of nowhere and did some snorkeling, on the great barrier reef!!!  the water was so warm, about 28 degrees to be exact and the things you see underwater are amazing.  it took a while to get used to breathing through a snorkel but after that I was diving under touching giant clams, swimming with schools of fish and checking out the coral, I snagged a piece don't tell the greenies.   the colors were amazing, bright yellow and blue and purple fish everywhere, green eels popping their heads out of little caves, I could have stayed down there forever, but we had something else to tend to.  we took off from there and went out a bit further and did some fishing near the reef.   we chucked some bait on the hooks and lowered our line down into the water by hand, you could feel the fish going nuts on the bait snagging bits here and there, you would have to yank just at the right time to catch the bastards, they're getting smarter.   when I finally got one I reeled up a beautiful reef trout, light brown with blue and dark green spots all over it, cool looking fish.   I caught a few of those but they were all too small to keep, luckily I wasn't the only one who didn't catch anything so that was cool, so we said piss on it and backtracked a bit and checked out ANOTHER reef with our snorkels, man I cant believe how warm this water is, and how much life is under that water.  and to all you jackass fans me and Aaron found some of those sea cucumber and "made them blow their stuff"   haha man is that some sticky stuff.....haha.   on our way back in from an awesome day we saw a huge sea turtle just taking a bit of a break on the surface of the water just floating there, there is so much life out here on the reef and the ocean, it was awesome to take a peek at, next time were coming back with an underwater camera....

day 2 we went on a job hunt downtown cairns and checked out a few places to work dropped off some resumes...boring

day 3 rocked again when we woke up around 8 a little later this time and headed up to daintree the rainforest national park up north.  I guess this is one of the few rainforest pockets left in the world.   it took us about 2 hours to get up there and the scenery was beautiful, rainforest right up to the beach and huge mountains in the back.   we took this little barge to get to the rainforest bit and drove through some windy roads and ended up at this little cove with a secluded beach.  mind you there was some tourists there but the scenery was amazing something out of a postcard, man I couldn't believe I was actually there, we checked out a little lookout balcony on cape tribulation which is a famous cape I guess, and you could see forever, the ocean wouldn't end and neither would the coast line, amazing.   Simon had a small lot a bit back from there in an area called cowbay, a back stream goes right through his property and if anybody is interested and has got 65000 dollars to spare, call me up.   if I had it I would definitely buy it.  we stopped by a little bar in the area, had some beers and ate the biggest burger of my life and headed home.

so those 4 days so far up in cairns and I got to see some of the most amazing things, is so beautiful up here.      it was cool cause I got to do all these things at a fraction of the price tourists would pay so that was a big upside, but I'm in forever debt to this guy for taking me to these awesome places.... thanks Simon.

hope that's a helpful little update and hope to hear from all of you soon....

cheers

  -oLiver