constant raining

On Friday morning I walked to the Cape Tribulation lookout, which is one of the most famous and glorious views on offer in Australia. You will have seen it in countless brochures and TV ads - perfect light blue sea and white sandy beaches. Paradise picture postcard stuff.

When I got there it was pissing down with rain, the sea looked like the English Channel off Portsmouth and a middle aged Brummie couple were having a furious row about who's fault it was they had left the waterproofs in the hotel.

The sense of disappointment on the faces of all tourists there was palpable. After all, this wasn't a Sunday afternoon drive along the Norfolk coast spoilt by a spot of drizzle. This was one of the most remote locations in the world, and who only knows if I will ever get the chance to see it again in its splendour.

Generally speaking, however, I really enjoyed my time in the Daintree rainforest. It is a relatively new tourist attraction given that it was largely inaccessible until the Queensland government built a road through it in 1982. Until then it was home to indigenous tribes and dope smoking hippies. The latter group were forcibly evicted by the authorities after the road was completed, which I personally think was a shame. Goa and other parts of Asia are perfect examples of how alternative cultures enrich the enjoyment of visiting remote communities. Quite frankly, Cape Tribulation could do with a few less motels and a bit more marijuana.

The lovely 'Little Brett' picked us up at 1.30pm to take us back to Cairns. Our trip back included seeing the bit of the ocean where Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, which struck me as a slightly bizarre part of a tourist tour, and a swim in the Mossman Gorge - a fresh water river and waterfall. We also stopped off in the rather exclusive resort of Port Douglas, which can claim Bill Clinton as a regular guest. I wonder what Bill would have made of what I saw in my brief time there, which included a mother and daughter drinking alcopops in the street and spitting at passing strangers. He'd probably have fucked them.

I got back to Cairns at around 6pm. It had been a good trip and a vast improvement on my first few miserable days here. I checked into a new hostel - this one much cleaner and with vastly superior facilities, although much louder.

My next destination is Darwin - Australia's most northern city and capital of the Northern Territory. With the weather not looking like it was going to change in Cairns very soon, I booked myself a flight bound for Darwin on Sunday.

In the evening I was bereft of things to do, so I decided to re-visit Nu Trix - the club I containing four people that I was unceremoniously chucked out of last weekend for being "all over the place". I figured - correctly - that they would either not remember me or would be so desperate for custom I would get in anyway. By the time I left the club at 2.30am, I counted 24 paying customers inside. I make that an increase of 83 per cent on my last visit. The management must be delighted...

Elton John is a homosexual

On Thursday morning I was picked up at the awful time of 7am to commence my expedition into the deepest parts of the Daintree Rain Forest.

In my haste to get everything into my backpack, I managed to snap off one of the straps. Nice one. I finally stumbled out of the hostel and into my transport with various bits of clothing hanging round my body and resembling a bag lady.

Ah yes, 'my transport'. In the brochure from which I booked this trip, I was led to believe an air conditioned 4x4 would be my carriage for the next two days. What I actually got was something more similar to the kind of van you normally see transporting football supporters up the M6.

Still, the van had an address system that allowed our guide to point out places of interest along the way. My particular favourite was when we passed a gay resort, resplendent with the obligatory rainbow flags, on the coast just north of Cairns...

"If you look to your right, folks, you will notice the flags outside that hotel. This is to indicate it is a gay resort. Believe it or not 'they' have their own nudist beach there. Relax, we won't be stopping there! There is actually a gay club in Cairns, called Nu Trix. One night when I was new to the city I heard music coming from it. I was about to go in when I saw two guys getting it on at the entrance. I never thought I'd be relieved to see such a thing, but at least it meant I was saved from going in!"

The tour guide's name was 'Little Brett'. I am not going to make any suggestions as to why he is called 'little'. What I can say without fear of being corrected by anybody, is that Brett is a rather unattractive and tubby man who is unlikely to be of interest to the average human being - whatever their sexual orientation. Why do so many straight people think they are somehow irresistible to gay men? It's as if they think the famous scenes from Police Academy when Captain Harris walks into the Blue Oyster Bar are an accurate reflection of how they are likely to be treated...

I wondered how 'Little Brett' was going to follow up his little insight into gay tourist attractions. Perhaps by inviting everyone else to join in with a rousing rendition of 'Elton John is a homosexual!' or 'Le Saux, takes it up the arse!'.

The answer came when we arrived at the Daintree River for our crocodile cruise. As everyone boarded the boat with their complimentary early morning tea and biscuits, the Aussie crew unsurprisingly tried to crack a series of rather predictable jokes about how we were all going to be ravaged by blood thirsty crocodiles during the trip. It's an unusual thing to say to your paying customers, but this is Australia. Anyway, then up pops our mate Brett. "I'm not sure those biscuits we've given you will satisfy the hunger of a croc," he offered by way of expert analysis. "Have we got any Germans on board? Good! If all else fails we'll push you guys over instead!"

To be fair, the day got a lot better from there. After spotting some crocs (hopefully you can make it out from the picture) we went on a generally informative jungle boardwalk before arriving at our destination for the evening - Cape Tribulation.

Cape Trib, as it is known, is one of the most remote parts of the rainforest. It was given its name by Captain James Cook, who's ship was damaged by the coral reef nearby in the late 18th century. He called it this because his experience trying to get the ship repaired in the area wasn't a pleasant one. He also named a mountain Mt Sorrow to reflect his mood. I can only assume the local Homebase was closed for the weekend.

I spent a pleasant evening in the settlement's small number of bars and restaurants. It was a highly relaxing to spend a night eating nice food, getting pissed and in good company - I met a couple of Sydney girls at the hotel who were highly entertaining. And there really is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing you are hundreds of kilometres away from anything else. Until you're ravaged by a Croc, I suppose...

Still raining...

I've perked up a bit after my little tantrum yesterday - not least because I spent the day out of Cairns.

It's still rained, but I enjoyed getting out and about and into the rainforest. I caught the gondola - or 'Skytrain' - away from Cairns and to Kuranda, which is a remote settlement and one of the area's main tourist attractions. It is basically no more than a glorified theme park, but it still maintains an alternative vibe in keeping with its indigenous routes that allows you to ignore all the American and Japanese camera clutching tourists.

There are numerous Aboriginal shops selling everything from fine arts to didgeridoos, and a range of markets specialising in traditional culture. But as I walked around this village, the only Aboriginals I could see were hanging around the streets - generally smoking and eyeing people up with suspicion. I made a point of visiting every single outlet in this village that sold some kind of indigenous product. In just one did I see anybody of Aboriginal descent working. All the shops were run by white Australians. The Aborigines were all just hanging around, not looking particularly unhappy, but totally detached from a 'community' that was trading off their heritage. It was bizarre. The nearest I saw of any kind of integration between the two cultures was an Aboriginal wearing a Chelsea shirt. And that was hardly encouraging...

The journey back to Cairns was via a 19th century railway line, which was originally constructed to ensure remote communities did not starve during the wet season. Today it just ferries tourists back to their hotels.

It was an extremely picturesque day. I suppose I should point out that this part of Australian rainforest is overwhelmingly wet forest land - it is not like the jungle you see in 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'. There are no killer snakes, Ant and Dec or Christine Hamilton in this part of the world. Which is just as well.

Tomorrow I head off with a tour group in a 4x4 further into the rainforest, where I am likely to be acquainted a bit more with Australia's famous inhabitants...

National Lampoon's Cairns Vacation

This is fast turning into the worst part of the trip so far.

On Monday it continued to chuck it down with rain. Today, Tuesday, was an improvement - but it is still mainly overcast and depressing.

As I said in a previous post, Cairns just isn't a place you want to be when the weather is bad. This is a relatively small place from which people arrange to do stuff from. It has virtually nothing to offer itself should the heavens open. Actually, let me re-phrase that - there is nothing. You are quite literally left with a choice of staying in your room, trying to get a computer in a backpacker-rammed internet cafe, or getting pissed.

Now, I grant you, if you've just got back from a hard day at work, you may be wondering what the problem is. But when you're on holiday and have come to a place that markets itself on being hot all year round, it really isn't much fun. In fact, when you're on your own, it's totally depressing.

Guess what the five-day forecast predicts here? Yup, you guessed it. Rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain. And this is the dry season. It is almost unheard of for this to be happening at this time of year.

So, let's get this right. I left Sydney, which had just seen its worst weather for 30 years, to travel to a part of the world where it is summer all year round. And it's raining every day, with absolutely no prospect of letting up.

Should I be eaten by a crocodile during the remainder of my time in Australia, at least it won't come as much of a surprise given the way my luck has been going of late.

I couldn't stomach another day in this town doing nothing but wander around it's extremely average selection of bars, shops and restaurants. So I took myself into a booking agent and asked what could be realistically done in this weather without it being a waste of time.

Tomorrow I'm taking a gondola and train journey into the rainforest. Then I'm going to head further north into the unknown, where I will probably be washed away into a lagoon and raped by an indigenous tribe. At least it will be more interesting than Cairns. Chipping Sodbury is more interesting than Cairns. I asked the booking agent what else could be done during my time here. She replied that as it was forecast to rain for the rest of the week, in the circumstances, I should look to get out after I'd finished my trip into the rainforest. Marvellous. Even the agents who are probably on commission to sell activities advise fucking off...

Am I being over the top? Maybe. It just has been one of those times when if it can go wrong, it has - and then got worse. The picture at the top of this post hopefully gives some kind of indication of what Cairns looks like when the sun forces its way through the clouds. Unfortunately, this has hardly ever happened and you would have no idea from walking around that you were at the foot of an ancient world heritage protected rainforest. It really is a miserable, miserable experience.

Where next? Well, I have absolutely no intention of swapping one rain swept resort for another. If the weather forecast hasn't improved somewhere in this country by the time I'm back from the rainforest, yours truly will be planning an unscheduled trip into south east Asia...

why does it always rain on me?

Cairns, in case you didn't know, is the main gateway to the tropical north. It is where tourists can book their day trips to the rainforest, arrange to go snorkeling or hire 4x4s. As a result, it is teeming with visitors - most British or Irish - all year round.

On Saturday night I explored the city's much vaunted pubs and bars, before heading off to Cairns' one and only venue for those who like to bowl from the Pavilion End. I was fairly optimistic about this place - despite it being called 'Nu Trix' - and was hoping for a good night. After all, this is a city with a permanent population of around 100,000, there are thousands more young tourists in town and you'd have to go a bloody long way to find another gay venue - roughly 1,500 kilometres south to Brisbane or 2,000 west to Darwin, to be precise.

When I got into the place at around midnight, it therefore came as something of a surprise to find just four paying customers there and me. The bar staff and bouncers outnumbered the punters. So, I bought myself a drink and sat reading one of the free newspapers available. It's not much fun going to any club on your own, but needs must when you are travelling by yourself. It's quite another thing when the club is next to empty. Sat by myself, I must have looked like some kind of closeted, friendless married man, who was escaping his real life for the evening in order to seek random sexual gratification. Or something like that.

After about 20 minutes during which not one single extra person entered the club, I went to the toilet. When I came out, there was a bouncer waiting for me. "We've been watching you," he said. "You're all over the place. Time to go." And so I was marched to the door and the number of paying customers inside the club instantly dropped by 25 per cent.

I was initially incredulous about this - not least because I was nowhere near as pissed as this prick seemed to think - but I wasn't going to kick up a fuss about being told to leave a place that practically had nobody in it.

Another reason I took my exclusion on the chin was because it didn't come as a surprise. Bouncers in the UK may be scum, and do not tend to operate in a fair or rational way. But generally, on the whole, you do need to have done something wrong in order to be punished. In Australia, they adopt a pre-emptive approach to potential disorder. Bouncers closely monitor people inside clubs, and if it looks even vaguely like you might be getting a bit tipsy, they often throw you out. Even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong or said a word to a soul. I've known people to be plucked from dance floors and removed. My crime was to be "all over the place", which I suppose was accurate in the sense that it took me a little while to locate the Gents in an establishment I had never frequented before.

I wish I'd asked the bouncer what he thought I was going to do. Start a fight with the four other people in the club? Fall onto an empty dance floor? Perhaps bouncers assume an intoxicated person is going to become violent because that's what they do when they've had a drink. Ask yourself this. When is the last time you heard of a fight in a gay bar? Either bouncers don't understand a brawl is not very high up a gay man's agenda on a night out, or they just enjoy persecuting them out of prejudice. I suspect it is both.

Anyway, that was Saturday. Since then I've not been able to do very much because the weather has been, to put it bluntly, shite. It has consistently pissed it down. I said in my last post that this does not matter when the temperature is 30 degrees, and this is true. The problem is it's hovering around 22 here. It's not unpleasant, but it kinda limits what you can do given that all the attractions and activities in this part of the world are actually of the outdoor variety.

Cairns does not have a beach as such, and the sea off the coast is not advisable to swim in because it is home to the lethal box jellyfish. The authorities have made up for this by creating a giant swimming pool by the sea, which is completely free and just blends into a park as if it were a pond. It is very well maintained as well. Impressed as I am, I don't think this is a concept I would like to export. Can you see this working in, say, Southend or Margate?

I'm not due back in Sydney until July 5, so there is plenty of time for the sun to get its hat on. It just bloody well better had.

'Canz'

Wind, rain and gales battered Sydney again this weekend - so it's just as well I left on Saturday and missed the worst of it.

Friday was my last day with the New South Wales Fire Brigades. I really can't be bothered at the moment to discuss in any great detail what it was like working there. Maybe some other time. Or, then again, maybe not. It was a useful experience. I was also reasonably well paid and the job was mine for as long as I needed it. Can't ask for much more, in all honesty.

I was taken out to a Chinese restaurant for my leaving 'do'. The food was awful, but I didn't have to pay, so I wasn't complaining. At the lunch, I was presented with my leaving card and presents. These were a Victoria Bitter stubby holder, a fly swat, a pair of flip flops with the Australian flag on and - last but not least - a pictorial book entitled 'Australia's most deadly and dangerous creatures'. Winding up poms about the threat from this country's more threatening inhabitants is something of a national sport here. It would be more funny if it wasn't for the fact a lot of people living in Sydney have probably seen more of England than they have of Australia. The idea they are all some kind of glorified version of Crocodile Dundee is complete bollocks.

On Saturday I flew to Cairns - or 'Canz', as it is pronounced - in north Queensland. I have to go back to Sydney for my flight out of Australia, so it wasn't quite farewell to the old girl yet. It was, however, a bit emotional to pack all my stuff away in the flat and effectively end the life I have had in the city.

Leaving most of my things with my flatmate, I put on my backpack and headed for the airport. My flight up to Cairns was with Jetstar - Australia's answer to easyjet. Flying with budget airlines is all very well, but when the journey time is over three hours it really does start to become a bit much. This particular flight was full of screaming kids. Why do people take babies on holiday? They won't remember it in later life, so there is absolutely no benefit to the child whatsoever, and the parents get no break from the considerable time they have to devote being being a mum or dad.

Anyway, anyway. Enough of my miserable whingeing. I arrived in Cairns early evening, and although it is also raining here, that really is not a problem. They do not have typical seasons here - it is hot all year round, you just get some parts of the year wetter than others. In other words, it doesn't really matter if it chucks it down and it's 30 degrees...