So, we reached Cairns. The terminus of our great trek up the East Coast and our locale for both Xmas and New Year, we’d done our research and booked ahead at the Trip-Advisor-adored Tropic Days, to ensure a place and to minimise Holiday Season stress. Although we had a fair wait for the courtesy bus when we arrived, any minor worries about the place were soon swept away. The lady on reception, Helen, was fantastic. The decor was from the heart; other guests friendly; and mostly everything was free*, decent and in good supply. The hostel’s only real drawback was often cited to be the 45 min or so walk to town; but with a free courtesy bus a dozen times a day, this was hardly fair criticism!

Not long after we arrived, we had the opportunity to fly up to Lizard Island for a day trip. Can I resist the chance to take a flight on a light ten-seater plane? If its destination also happens to be snorkelling off a remote island usually inhabited by no more than a few Monitors and a handfull of people paying two grand a night to stay there… well then that just seals the deal doesn’t it? And so we were off to Cairns airport, to board a plane for…

Wait wait wait. We’re going snorkelling. I need a camera. A camera that goes underwater. For tomorrow. I have a freaking brilliant idea!

So we went down to a high street shop and bought that Sony TX-10 digital camera, at full high street prices like a pair of suckers. But we were a pair of suckers that were going snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef with it, so that made me feel better. Of course, they didn’t even have it there at the shop; I had to walk out to the other store some way past the hostel (Lucy was a little off colour, so stayed at the room). This trip ended up being vastly more epic than I’d been expecting, but I will save my thoughts on the Australian habit of revoking the pavement without warning for another day.

Armed with this new camera (that we couldn’t charge because it claimed to be full already), we boarded the small twin-prop Piper Chieftain and leaped into the sky. The rainforest looks pretty incredible from a nice low height of 1,500 ft, made all the more awesome by the fact that the pilot knew we were there for the kicks so made sure we did plenty of steep turns and got a good look at everything.

We arrived on the island airstrip, where I was incredulous to discover that these lizards have managed to construct a better runway than Clacton-on-Sea; it’s made of tarmac for a start. Who would have known that reptiles needed large tracts of servicable runway in all weather conditions? The plane backtracked to the middle, swung onto the dirt side parking and we stepped off. My camera battery had almost a whole pip left after I’d squandered it on the flygasm on the way in, but I swore I’d get at least one decent underwater picture after all the trouble we went to. The beach we headed for was about six or seven hundred metres away along a deserted jungle trail so we set off into the bush after our pilot; who had switched to bushman tour-guide mode as though some master of disguise. He offered us some of the green bum ants but we declined**.

Unlikely as it seems, our snorkel would start in a river. In northern Queensland, as any Australian will tell you, about the stupidest thing you can do is jump into a dark salty river. Saltwater crocodiles like to eat tourists; mistaking them for clothed pigs. However, the island was way off the coast and the saltwater crocs can’t get here, SUPPOSEDLY. I was in a confident mood anyway: you see, I’ve never liked snorkelling because I always seem to get the little pipe thing full of water and I figure if I’m gonna go in I’d rather just go the whole way and try SCUBA. But I was willing to give this a fair shot, so grabbing our new camera and every piece of floating / swimming kit that was offered, we jumped in and floated gently along to where the stream flowed out into the bay. Although it took some adjustment, I was pleasantly surprised to get on well with the snorkel setup. For someone who is about as buoyant as a bullet-riddled steel colander, I was glad to have all the help I could get in the form of foot fins and both a wetsuit and a float vest. All I had to do was look down under the water and gently kick along. I watched with wonder as the beach shrank down into the depths of all of three metres. And then…

Suddenly a wall of gnarled rock and shapes loomed out of the blue ahead of us. We were drifting over the coral, perhaps fifty metres or less from the shore of the bay; reds and yellows and pulsating purples of every shape you can imagine. I experimented with the camera as we explored this incredible world (it was at this point that Lucy’s current underwater Facebook cover picture was taken of us by friends Len and Ryan using this spangly new camera). We were really on the lookout for turtles: it was Lucy’s Primary Objective, so to speak. So imagine our expressions as we came awkwardly up onto the beach like ducks, eager for lunch, when someone suddenly says:

“Look, a turtle! Two turtles!”

So we did the snorkel equivalent of a fighter scramble and returned to the water. But all the commotion is probably what drove them off in the first place, so they were swiftly gone. And man, after tortoises you think of these creatures as not quick but in water turtles really can move. As we learned at the Reef HQ Aquarium in Townsville, there’s not much in the natural sea that can touch an adult turtle. These buggers ran circles around us. Mostly everyone went back to shore, then Len spotted one had returned. Lucy and I persevered with it; Lucy trailing the turtle and myself following her until I could see it too. The turtle seemed to consider us slow-ass humans to be no threat and was content to let us paddle along with it. Needless to say, Lucy and I were also very content with the arrangement.

After lunch we returned to the water a few more times before heading back to the plane for our flight home, though not before everyone put their backs into pushing the plane into the right spot first. Then we were off up into the air again, returning home over the Reef rather than the coast. We saw Endeavour Reef; hit by Captain Cook (or more specifically the hull of Captain Cook’s boat). We saw a shipwreck that was described as “left by hippies in the seventies”. I’m not sure what the factual accuracy of that was. I am going to simply reference it as citation needed for now.

Overall, I hugely enjoyed my first taste of real snorkelling. And we were both looking forward to New Year, on which we’d booked to go out on the Great Barrier Reef once more.

(*) - Apart from the air conditioning which was a dollar for 3 hours. But considering you can turn it on MAX for a few mins then turn it off, a dollar actually goes pretty far. And those things use up a hell of a lot of electricity you know!

(**) - Latin name Greenantus bumus. Queenslanders will try to get you to bite off the ant's large green abdomen; explaining that they impart a sharp, citrus flavour. What they don't tell you is that the little bastards bite you if you screw up.