Greetings from Cairns

G'day readers. Greetings from a nice, warm, Cairns.

Its winter down here in the southern hemisphere, and its been kind of cold in Canberra. So, I came here where its nice and warm. Should be a great holiday, and the complete opposite of my post exam trip to Adelaide, which is further south than Canberra. In June. Brr.

No pictures yet, as I just got here and its been dark. Hooray for that. So, I'll give you a few observations about the air travel system in Australia.

Basically, you have Qantas and Jet Star to get around. So, your options are kind of limited. Of course, when the entire country is the population of New York City (a bit over actually, but their roughly the same) this sort of thing happens I guess.

On a related note, the airline network is not as deep as you might expect. Take for example, Canberra. Canberra is the nation's capital. You'd think this sort of place would have flights going all over the place. Well....not really.

You can fly to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane and then other places from there. thats what I know of. My flight to Adelaide in June is routed through Melbourne, so its not like provincial capitals are the ticket out of Canberra. Again, this is probably due to the limited population, but I still found it surpring.

Also surprising, was checking in at Canberra Airport. I did not have to show my ID once. In fact, I only had to show it once the whole trip, and that was checking in at Brisbane airport when I stiwtched airlines (to JetStar). Remember that the next time your in the security line in the states. "Australians do not put up with this..." Well, they do. Just not to the extent we do.

Also, there is no wireless at my hostel, the first one that has had that issue. Australia seems bound and determined to keep me from posting on this blog from my laptop.

Tomorrow will probably be spent exploring Cairns and setting up a reef trip for later in the week.

Until then,

Alan