Meanwhile, back in the tropics ...

Stella and Tony drove us into Frankston after lunch on Monday and we took the train back into Melbourne, ready for our final Steak Night.  Well, for this trip anyway!  Present on this occasion, in addition to Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and me were Simon, Bethan, Noodle and Christian, who had come to make sure that we were really leaving :-)

Sunset on our final evening in East Melbourne

Then on Tuesday, well before dawn had cracked, we all piled into the car and poor Ian - who had to be up early as well and didn't even have a nice holiday to look forward to - took us to the airport.  And now we are in Cairns, in Far North Queensland.

We arrived at around 8 in the morning, hours and hours and hours before we could check in to Reef Palms (which is a budget motel close to the airport, made up of studio apartments; ours would comfortably sleep 5). Lindsey has hired a car, so we headed north to Palm Cove for a stroll and a small spot of breakfast:

Then we pootled on up to Port Douglas for another stroll before returning to Cairns for lunch.  And then it was *finally* time for us to check in to our room!!  It was a very early start, it must be said (I am not normally up and rushing about at 4 in the morning, and in Queensland it was only 3!) but it did give us a full day to play when we got here.

I don't think that there was a pub night in Melbourne this week.  But there was in Cairns.  A pub night combined with (yet another) steak night.  Last time we were here we ate in a nearby, not very exciting "English" pub.  Leafing through the Visitor Information in the apartment, I discovered that there is another pub even more nearby, and it does really quite nice food.  Lindsey and I had steak.  The Builder had a fish platter so substantial that it defeated him. I would be worried, but he had had three quite large meals in the space of 9 or 10 hours!

Lunchtime view