I have done what at the start of my year in Oz I thought I might not do: I have come to Tourism Central, also known as the East Coast of Australia. And Cairns is perhaps the epicentre of the tourism business here, with its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree rainforest national park, and the hundreds of other attractions in tropical Far North Queensland.

For the next few days I became a pure tourist, spending money hand over fist on organised trips, backpacker beds for the night, and other tourist essentials like camera batteries (yes, even though I use rechargeables, I managed to be foolish enough to forget to bring the spare set with me, and was forced to purchase the overpriced wares of a captive-customer-type tourism shop). But at least I managed to fight down the urge to buy a teeshirt to commemorate my time here - luckily they didn't have one my size.

But enough of generalities. Let's get on to the particulars of my time in the Far North!

On arrival in Cairns I caught the shuttle bus into town and stayed at Gilligan's Backpackers, a swanky new hostel right in the heart of the city. And yes, Cairns feels like a city even though it's only small compared to Brisbane: it has a grid of downtown streets, some headline tourism features (a casino, a pier, a man-made lagoon on the waterfront for worry-free - that is to say, deadly jellyfish free - swimming), and generally more than one option for everything.

I ended up in the same dorm as an Irish chap that had been on the bus from the airport. He was meeting four Irish friends of his, who were all in our room too. They were a merry crowd, and invited me to join them for beers on the balcony. Later I went for some dinner to a restaurant recommended by Rainnie, right on the waterfront. There I saw a partial eclipse of the moon (very partial - only 7%) whilst stuffing delicious fajitas into my mouth.

The next morning I joined a small tour to Cape Tribulation, via a wildlife park near Port Douglas. We also had a walk in the Daintree National Park and up the Mossman Gorge, which is a beautiful stretch of rainforest just north of Port Douglas. The tour group was fun: there was a girl from Brisbane, a guy from Costa Rica and a married couple originally from Argentina and now living in Israel. We spoke Spanish most of the time, and I was called upon to do some translating for our Aboriginal guide, whose Spanish was almost nonexistent. It was great!

Cape Tribulation is the point at which the rainforest meets the reef. Quite literally, trees line the shore, a mangrove swamp sits astride the tide mark, and coral formations stretch out into the Great Barrier Reef. It's wonderful there. But what most amazed me were the balls of sand left in astonishing patterns by the little crabs that live in the beach. It looked just like Aboriginal art, with its earth tones and its geometric dot motifs. Many photos were taken.

That evening I stayed in Port Douglas, at the YHA there. I had some dinner, chatted with a guy from Harrow and a guy from Geelong, and then went for a late-night walk along the beach. The walkway was mostly unlit, but there was lots of moonlight to light my way. And it was lovely and warm. A delightful night.

Wednesday was my day on the Barrier Reef. I took a trip with a company called Haba (Spanish for broad bean, but there was no connection) along with perhaps 50 other people. This might sound like a big boatload, but there's a company called Quicksilver that take hundreds of people out at a time! I decided to avoid them, and go with the slightly cosier Haba group sizes. Better still, the diving was limited to five of us; everyone else was either on an introductory dive or just snorkelling.

I have to say that the reef itself was a little disappointing. I enjoyed my three dives, but there were very few fish and the coral formations were nothing I haven't seen elsewhere. I guess that's only to be expected in an area that is chockerblock with tourists. I've heard that if you do a week-long liveaboard on the Barrier Reef you see much more exciting and untouched areas. But I didn't have the time or the money for that sort of malarkey! Ah well. At least I got a chance to work on my tan on the sundeck of our catamaran, as we whizzed back to shore in the afternoon.

That evening I splurged on a delicious meal at a swanky fish restaurant. I had a G&T to start, then white wine with my main course of Red Emperor - a delightfully sweet and flaky white fish - and a monster creme brulee for dessert. I needed a walk after all that, so I headed for the beach. But bugger me! I was nearly killed outside the restaurant by a falling mango! It missed my head by centimetres and smacked into the ground. In revenge I picked it up and ate it. Hah!

At the waterfront I heard someone crying, so I went over to investigate. It was a young attractive woman, so I didn't feel the need to run away. Instead I sat beside her and tried to find out what was wrong. It turns out she was having dinner with her two grown-up sons and they had upset her so she had run off.

She'd had a bitch of a week, with a close friend dying in a horrendous car crash, her daughter's wedding being ruined by her husband's drunken capers, her dog having to be put down, and now a falling out with her sons over their belief that she had had an inappropriate dinner with the funeral director for her dog's burial! If she hadn't been so desperately sad, I would have laughed out loud at such an unlikely chain of events. Instead I tried to comfort her as best I could, and left her much more collected than she had been when I had first heard her sobbing uncontrollably.

I went for a drink at a nearby bar, then continued my walk along the waterfront. I found a spot where there was nothing between me and the hot wind that was blowing in off the sea. In the distance, to the south, there were fierce flashes of lightning, but here in Port Douglas there wasn't even the threat of a drop of rain. It felt good to be here, with the evening breeze ruffling my chest and arm hair and my stomach contented with tasty fish.

My second full day in Queensland was altogether a little slower than my first. I decided to spend most of the morning online, catching up with myself on my website and with the emails. I have got a fairly busy programme of activities over the next couple of weeks, and I didn't want to forget stuff that happened before I even got here!

In the afternoon I went for a long walk along the riverfront and through Brisbane's botanical gardens. Then I caught a train out to Ipswich, which is a town due west of Brisbane on the road that heads into the interior of Australia. My friend James has a friend he's known for years & years living in Ipswich, and this friend Jamie was kind enough to meet with me for dinner and a few drinks. We had a lovely time, and given the lateness of the hour I crashed at Jamie's sizeable house out in a new suburb of the town.

The next morning Jamie dropped me in the centre of Ipswich - he had to go and man his gift shop just outside the centre of town - and I made my way around a few of the town's sights. In sweltering heat I strolled through the Japanese gardens (apparently they've been voted best Japanese gardens outside Japan; this could have something to do with Ipswich's twin city in Japan...) and then through the small but well laid out nature reserve (basically a zoo with big enclosures), where I saw emus, wallabies, lizards and many local bird species.

The afternoon I dedicated to the Queensland Rail Museum, which shares a site with Queensland Rail's railyards and workshops just north of town. This is much more interesting than you would think. There are historic blacksmith's workshops, steam locomotive restoration programmes, and guided tours of the site. But possibly the best thing was the huge model railway, where the various different station types found in QLD are faithfully reproduced, and where the passenger train has an in-cab camera which affords a driver's-eye view of giant people peering down onto the track!

I caught the train back into town and then out to Jack & Val's in Everton Park, where I met with their daughter Lindy again. This evening we were celebrating Lindy's birthday (it's actually next Monday) at a Mexican restaurant, together with her brother Tim, his wife Trace, and their kids Sophie & Ben. We all got on like a house on fire! It was fabulous fun spending time with even more wonderful relatives. The kids & I got on very well, with lots of witty banter flying to and fro. It's a pity I probably won't get another chance to catch up with the four of them; they are very busy people and I'm not around for very long.

On Sunday the weather became cool and wet, with a constant light rainfall that delighted the locals; they haven't seen rain like it in years, apparently, and the drought in QLD is very severe. It was a quiet indoors type of day that reminded me strongly of days in Austria at the onset of autumn, where a silence seems to fall where once was summertime mirth. Val is full of stories, and the hours flew by. Jack & I talked lots too, and we went for a walk in the afternoon, taking advantage of a brief break in the rain.

That evening, Jack got out his homemade shove-ha'penny board and taught me how to play this traditional English bar game. In essence, you shove pre-decimalisation halfpenny coins up a wooden board with the base of your thumb and try to get them to come to a stop between certain marker lines. It's great fun, and our game went down to the very last shove, with mature experience winning out over youthful exuberance in the end.

I spent the rest of the evening talking with Val. Her life is truly fascinating. I've never met anyone who grew up in India under the Raj, and it is gripping to hear what difficulties she had adjusting to life in Britain after WWII.

Monday was a day of preparation for the next stage in my travels. Jack drove me to a local library, where I tried to organise myself online but only succeeded in realising how many damn options there are for things to do in northern Queensland! Then we had a quick lunch at home before Jack dropped me off at the airport.

Another week, another airline. This time I was flying with Jetstar, which is Qantas' wholly-owned no-frills subsidiary. The plane was brand new - delivered that week - and was a very comfortable Airbus with leather seats. A step up from the nasty old 737s you usually have to put up with on cheaper airlines. Nice. And two hours later I was in Cairns...