Happy New Year!

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a nice New Years Eve. We went to watch Eragon in the afternoon (don't bother, watch Lord of the Rings at home instead) and then cooked up some salmon for our tea before walking into town to watch some fireworks. There were lots of people sitting along the esplanade on blankets in the heat of the evening, it's pretty cool to be able to not freeze to death whilst you watch fireworks! Some were sitting along the edge of the esplanade, legs dangling over the edge just along from the signs warning you of crocs! Foolish Queenslanders, we think the sun affects their brains. We stood at a safe distance and oohed and aahed appropriately. Afterwards we took a bit of a walk to find a bar that didn't charge to get in and stayed there until midnight. They had some quite good music on and sold bottles of fizzy Hardy's wine for a fiver! Great!
It was fun to phone home and speak to a couple of people, a guy passing us told us to say "AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE" (so there you go).
We got up unfeasibly early for New Years Day as our van is like an oven in the Quensland heat but luckily we had a pool to cool off in. We bought some bacon and then took a drive into the Atherton tablelands - Cairns' highlands. We found a nice spot to cook our bacon sandwiches although we were a bit worried about the croc sign further down the road. It was ok though as we were high up from the river and away from the edge!
We had a nice morning exploring the area and looking at variuos waterfalls and rainforest. We ddin't see a cassowary despite signs saying we might, which is quite lucky as they're a bit feisty.
In the afternoon we went to Tjapukai, an aboriginal culture centre where we watched some dancing shows, a didjeridoo demo, spear throwing, boomerang throwing and watched a short history film about the tribe - the Tjapukai - who run the centre. Chris' boomerang came back, but apparently I didn't have enough snap in my wrist! There was also a good show about their creation stories, where the people interacted with holograms.
It's been quite hard to see Aboriginal people in Australia, up until we visited the Tjapukai centre we'd only really seen them on park benches, so it was cool to experience some of their culture. For such a modern country that seems to be pretty well run, the intergration of Aborignal people seems to be a big problem.

Today we handed back our Wicked van and flew to Alice Springs. It's hot here, hotter than Queensland! It feels like when you stand too close to a fire. We're quite proud of ourselves that we didn't get sunburnt while we were in Cairns as most other people we saw were. The sun index is 14, which is classified as extreme. Hopefully we'll stay the right colour for our time here as well. It's forcast to be 42 in the shade for our trip to Uluru tomorrow!