Another 7am start. Emma, our guide, is extremely friendly and introduces everyone to each other on the bus. There are about 16 of us, from all over the world. Unfortunately we spend an hour doing pick-ups, partly as Emma is so keen to get us all talking and mixing. She tells us how unpopular the decision to build a beach in Cairns has been with the locals,. and how the council have had some terrible ideas about trying to make the town nicer for tourists. The idea is to get people to stay during the day rather than going on excursions - the policies mainly include trying to get rid of Aborigines, and stopping them meeting in the town's parks.

[Scrub turkey]

[Fig tree]

Emma is very knowledgeable, and tells us a lot about the tablelands and areas. We stop at a service station for toasties, then outside a sugar cane factory, whilst she tells us about the industry. Every time we see an animal or bird she stops, points it out and tells us a bit about it. We see more bird species than we've seen in the last few days, including bush turkeys. They're the size of a big chicken, but build ground nests the size of a small car!

The road is incredibly steep and winding, with wonderful views over the hills - the Great Dividing Range.

[Looking up the middle of the tree]

We're going to a fig tree, which doesn't sound exciting. However, it's the best tree I've ever seen! It's huge, with tons of branches winding up - the fig takes over another tree and kills it by out-competing it for sunlight and nutrients. We have a short walk around the woods, then back to the bus. It's a nice rainforest, pretty lush and fresh smelling - its been raining lightly all morning.

[Gympie]

What we're seeing is hilly green areas, not flat tablelands. Iain and I have opted out of this afternoon's trips around waterfalls, in favour of canoeing, so we might miss some of the best scenery. The bus is taking three trips in one - people can opt into staying overnight in the Tablelands at the On The Wallaby hostel - they also own the Dreamtime hostel where we're staying in Cairns.

[On the Wallaby]

We stop for a walk around a forest, but my foot is tired after yesterday and I opt out to read. Iain goes, and says it's good. They find leeches on people's feet - yuck.

Lunch is at Yungaburra, a town in the middle of nowhere, with a population of 900, which somehow supports tourists. We have burgers and chips, and then a guy picks up Iain and I for canoeing. Everyone else goes back on our bus to the waterfall/swimming option. We drive to the Lodge, and pick up five others, who've stayed overnight. We go to a man-made lake and get out canoes. I'm a little unsure how my foot will cope with this, but thought I'll give it a go. They're two-man canoes, so Iain takes the back seat of ours and steers. This is helpful as I'm inexperienced and hopeless. The lake was made earlier in the twentieth century. Unfortunately it sunk a couple of villages by accident, which are now underneath.

It starts raining again, and we get really wet and cold. Lifejackets are the only thing keeping us a bit warm and dry. We go Yabby fishing, pulling up small cages, which I didn't know we'd be doing, and am a bit unhappy about. Most of the wildlife seems to have gone into hiding; we're supposed to be able to see tree kangaroos and platypus; this is why we've come. They only live in small parts of Australia and are relatively rare. Unfortunately we don't see a single tree kangaroo. We do, however, see plenty of birds, including pelicans; a huge dead fish, and eventually a platypus, 100m away. It keeps diving and swimming away from us, so we can only glimpse bits of it. We're pretty disappointed, particularly as our "guide" doesn't seem to be guiding us, we just canoe randomly. The lake isn't that big, and there's one creek to go up, which is short. We're bored, and cold. Everyone seems to have a silent consensus to head back, which we do, two hours early. We get back to the hostel, freezing.

[A diving blur]

[Honestly, it's a platypus]

Iain and I didn't bring spare clothes as we weren't swimming - we hadn't thought of rain. A fire is lit at the hostel but it isn't yet hot. We have coffees, but are still shivering. We give up trying to get warm, and decide to go exploring- the bus to take us back to Cairns isn't due until 5pm and it's only 3.30pm. The guide tells us of a creek down the road where we can probably see platypus. He drives us there, and we walk round. Within two minutes we've seen a platypus right in front of us - diving and swimming around unconcerned. It's great, and fun to watch. We walk back to the hostel, pleased we've seen something at last. As we arrive back, so does our bus, but doesn't leave for another hour. We eat fruit, try to warm up by the fire, and get bored. Eventually we leave at 5.30pm.

We request to be dropped near the restaurant we want to eat at, but unfortunately it's full, again. We try the Italian opposite, which is pretty good. Iain has a seafood pasta, with big yabbies, fish and muscles. I'm trying to persuade him to eat lots of fish in this area, since it should be varied and fresh.

We type a couple of days diary, but can't find an internet cafe with good enough machines to upload photos. We walk back to the hostel at 10.30pm. It's nice to be able to walk around in the warm evening, Cairns is pretty quiet and peaceful, if you avoid the backpacker areas!