Cairns - Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef!
And the location of the conference... which I guess was why I was in Australia (although I sometimes had to remind myself of this! Cairns itself is a nice enough tourist town... no shortage of shops selling souvenirs - including the ever popular didgeridoos (I got one!)... but it is the stuff around it that is really worth checking out. I went on the skyrail gondola, which is the tourist thing to do, and seeing as they sponsored the conference, I figured I'd better see it! That was fun, and did some souvenir shopping at the top in Kuranda - boomerangs of course! I went for a day of snorkelling and hiking to Fitzroy Island with Yoav, a friend I met at the conference who is climbing big-ass trees in Tasmania, and we also went on a rafting trip on the Barron River. Each morning I would walk into town from the Serpent Hostel (definitely not the quietest hostel I have stayed in!) along the esplanade and there were lots of cool birds to see along the way - ibises, storks, pelicans, etc.! I even tried all of the typical Oz food at the Red Ochre Grill - crocodile, kangaroo, emu, and ostrich - no worries mate - but once is enough!
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