Mission Beach - along the coast from Townsville, this is one more of our nature-hunting stops. This time for cassowaries - sort of emu-like bird, with big hump on its head and quite colorful. We didn't actually expect to see any to be honest - there were only two short tracks where we had "chance of spotting one". This time luck was with us though - while walking through the jungle track, Kacka spotted one on the track. It was  about 200ft away from us, but we did see it!
Lava caves in Undara - yet another side-track to the outback, this time not so far though. The lava caves used to be the longest ones in the world until the found longer ones somewhere else :) They're formed by lava flow (duh!) and the cave entrances are actually collapsed sections of what used to be one long tunnel. One thing we noticed on our way there worth mentioning is the A1 highway. It's the one that goes around the whole Australia. Well, it's sealed (i.e. not a dirt road), however in some sections, only in the middle. It's not a problem as long as you're the only one on the road - which is for the most part. However, sometimes you do meet traffic, most in form of the flipping huge road-trains, which makes you sh*t your pants when you have to pass them :)
Great Barrier on Mike Ball liveaboard - we've managed to get a really nice deal for 4day liveabord with these guys. It was the first time on liveaboard for both of us and we were very excited. We were to visit the famous cod-hole as well as spend 2 days on the Ospray reef, which is only visited by liveaboard and supposed to be absolutely amazing. Well, I guess it is, but we didn't get to see it :( The weather was bad and the boat had to stick with sites on the inner barrier. It was ok, we did get to see the cod-hole and even ran into minky whales (unfortunately not underwater), but overall we couldn't help to feel disappointed. Maybe we're just spoiled by all the great dives we've done so far...
Daintree - the national park with rainforests north of Cairns. We went to Mossman as well as to Cape Tribulation, took a cruise on the river to see the "salties" (salt-water crocodiles). If it wasn't for the crowds of tourists it would've been nice, but we're just not used to be in so crowded places. One thing worth noting was our first car failure. We dropped our Wicked camper before we boarded the Mike Ball liveaboard, so after we rented regular car for the last couple of days in Cairns. So here we are, all the way in Daintree's rainforest, going uphill on narrow road, the car starts making funny noise. Minute after it just stops. Cars start piling behind us... Well, turned out there was a hole in the cooling and it overheated. Luckily it was  toyota, so all we had to do was to beg passing cars for some water, wait for 20 minutes for it to cool down a bit and off we went again.
Cairns - we've actually spent couple of days here, since we were waiting for my sister and niece to join us. It's obviously a tourist hub with a lot going on, tour-booking offices all over the place, bars, cafes, the works... They even have artificial beach on the beach-front which is very nice to hang out at. Once the girls arrived, we took them for a day dive-trip to the reefs with Haba. Nothing exceptional, but we did get to see the cuttlefish at last.

This concluded our coastal part of the trip. From Cairns we were flying to Alice Springs (which is in the middle of Australia's outback) and from there we were to drive up north to Darwin on the final leg.