And so, after two and a half weeks on the road, we reached our final destination. Cairns is the biggest town in northern Queensland, and prides itself on being a hub for visiting tourists. It certainly is making the most of its reputation – every second shop is a travel agent selling trips to the Reef and / or to Cape Tribulation – but once you get beyond the main streets overlooking the sea, it quickly becomes as small-town industrial as Rockhampton or Mackay.

The main purpose of a visit to Cairns is a Great Barrier Reef tour, and having already accomplished this, we were in for a relaxing couple of days. The weather was glorious and after the break-neck pace of the last couple of weeks, we didn't think we'd have too much difficulty with doing nothing for a while. We spent our first morning on Trinity Beach, one of Cairns's famous northern beaches, enjoying a cuppa and the sunshine from our camp chairs. What a way to spend a Monday morning!

En route into the city, we visited Kuranda, a self-confessed 'tourist town' which was originally established in the 1960s by a gang of hippies wanting to make a bit of cash. Today it lures the crowds with its 'traditional markets' selling all things tie-dyed and hand-woven. Apparently the best bit is actually getting there from Cairns: either by train through Barren Falls National Park, or by the Skytrain (a cable car to you and me). Since we drove, our overall impression was less than favourable. We had a half-hearted wander around the markets but quickly lost interest. The National Park was better: the elevated walkway gave stunning views over the local rainforest, culminating in a spectacular vista of the Falls far below. We also very much enjoyed stalking a couple in matching lime green T-shirts and jeans (check out the sneaky photo). If only we could take them with us to New Zealand, we might not look so conspicuous in our matching jackets.....

Cairns' most famous 'sight' is the Esplanade, or Boardwalk, as the Americans would call it. This walk runs alongside the ocean (there is no beach in Cairns) and gives close access to the pelicans who come to feed there at low tide. The Esplanade is also home to the Lagoon (lido to the Brits amongst you) where we spent as much time as possible during our two days in the city. It was absolutely packed every time we walked past, and no wonder – the council provides the lagoon completely free of charge to all who want to use it, complete with BBQs and aqua classes. In the UK, this place would be covered in graffiti and used as a toilet by tramps, but here, everyone seems to take much better care of their amenities. It's the hub of the city, even in 'winter' – though obviously in the tropics, 'winter' means 31 degrees rather than 41 degrees, and so the weather doesn't really prevent the swimming and sunbathing!

...He then made the 'Awesome' sign. Yeah, I thought. Awesome. About twenty feet away, the pale, terrifying, instantly-recognisable shape of a shark cut through the water in a slow curve, around us and away. It was a 6 foot long, whitetip reef shark.

We spent the day diving on the Opal Reef – a popular spot on the outer fringes of the Great Barrier Reef - having caught a high-speed catamaran out from Port Douglas with a company called HABA. Diving in Australia is big business. In Thailand on Koh Tao, our boat was twenty feet long, had 4 instructors and 8 divers. HABA's cat was about 60 feet long, had 25 divers, 75 snorkellers and 3 instructors. And a buffet lunch.

We were on a strict timetable, so after the hour and a half commute out to the first dive spot (during which we spotted another humpback whale) we were suited up, striding in, and descending to 18 metres before we really knew what was going on. This haste was probably a bit too much for Sarah and me. My oxygen consumption was awful, and Sarah had to abandon her dive after 15 minutes as her ears couldn't equalise quickly enough. HABA were kind enough to give her an extra dive for free later that day though. Sarah was (and still is) very pleased with this, as it means she now has one more dive in her log-book than me, so is technically a more experienced diver. Whatever. Has she seen a shark yet? No.

Once we got down there, the dive was great. The variety and number of fish around us was incredible. We swam around towers of coral and over giant clams, through shoals of chevron barracuda and (my favourite) yellow-tailed fusiliers, and even spotted a few clown-anenome fish (a Nemo for Alex & Rex). I was told by some of the more experienced divers that the reef wasn't in that great a condition compared to Thailand or the Red Sea, but it's hard to take these kinds of comments seriously when you've just swum with a shoal of barracuda or rapidly away from a shark!

Cape Tribulation is the northern-most point of our Aussie road trip, roughly 3000km from where we started in Byron. It was named by the famous Captain (then Lieutenant) Cook, who, having sailed nearly 16,000 miles across the world, managed to crash into the Cape 200 feet from the beach in 1770. Luckily a clever crew member managed to patch the ship's hull with an old sail, enabling them to coast ashore into a palm-lined paradise...

Before we visited this paradise, we visited the namesake town of the Daintree National Park, Daintree. The park is pretty impressive. The LP (Lonely Planet) tells us that although it only covers 0.01% of Australia's landmass, it has 36% of the country's mammal species, 50% of all birds, 60% of all butterflies and 65% of all ferns! Impressive as the park is, the village itself wasn't much. It featured three arts and crafts stores, a fish and chip shop and a sleeping dog.

Daintree village sits on the bank of the muddy Daintree river, surrounded by mangrove wetlands. If you ever go to Daintree, the one thing you should remember is DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE WATER. There are around 70 adult estuarine crocodiles cruising around in its murky waters. We had already been suitably freaked out by one of these creatures in the Bornean rainforest, so what did we decide to do in Daintree? We hopped onto a shallow bottom boat and went looking for some more...

At Bob Belcher's Crocodile Cruises (awesome name! Like a villain out of a Roald Dahl book), the receptionist shuddered when I bought an ice-cream from her;
'How can you eat that? It's so cold!'
It was 25 degrees. But to be fair to her, that's 10 degrees less than it normally is at this time of year. Luckily for us, the chilly temperature meant it was a great day to be looking for crocs. When it's hot they normally sleep / lurk under the water amongst the roots of the mangrove trees.

Coasting down the river bank at noon, swerving round thick overhanging tree branches and up side-streams, we saw 3 adult crocodiles. The first was Elizabeth, a 20 year old female thus named because when she was younger she had a paw injury that made it look like she was giving a royal wave. As we chugged by, Elizabeth decided to join us, and coasted alongside us for ten minutes, slowly swishing her tail, blinking her 2 sets of eyelids against the midday sun.

Having thankfully left Elizabeth behind us we then spotted Scooter, a 20 year old male lying on the river bank warming himself in the sun; and last but in no way least we saw the 46 year old, 5.3 metre long big daddy of the river, Fat Albert. He was mostly underwater with just his massive head resting on the bank, but you could tell from the shadow of his submerged body just how enormous he was. Though they look slothful for most of the time, when they want to crocodiles can move at 60kph – both underwater or on land – from a standing start. Imagine a 5.3 metre, 1 tonne crocodile moving at you at that pace.

(NB. Googling 'Fat Albert' just now to check I got his size right, I came across a news article from November 2009 in which crocodile tour operators were facing a government investigation after Albert attacked one of the tour boats: 'In an unprecedented attack and with little warning, the dominant 5m male known as Fat Albert, lunged nearly a metre out of the water and bit the railing of a small tour boat. Tourists scattered for safety as the huge crocodile left behind bite marks in the metal'. Very glad we didn't read this beforehand!)

Still shivering with fear, we drove on from Daintree and boarded the car ferry to cross the crocodile-infested river and get onto the Cape. It's like Jurassic park over there. Enormous trees, giant ferns and steaming mountains looming over the forest. The beach Cookie (our nickname for the increasingly familiar Captain Cook) landed on was incredible. Aside from the crashing incident (and later being killed by natives) he was a lucky man – white sands, turquoise waters and palm trees.

As we took another trek through tropical rainforest on the Cape, alert for rogue Cassowaries, it was amazing to think that 6 weeks earlier we were in the snowy mountains of Tasmania, and that just a week ago we were in the cool farmland of the Atherton Highlands. Even having driven 3000km across just one state, the sheer scale of Australia is hard to get your head round.

We were told by our friendly travel agent in Byron that if we were going to Cape Tribulation we simply must go the long way round and see the Tablelands, and I am very glad that we did. The 'Atherton Tablelands' is the collective name given to an area inland from the coast, which is home to some of the most beautiful scenery and natural features we've seen in Australia thus far. As James described it, “it's like the English countryside on steroids: everything's bigger and greener.” The site of Australia's most recently active volcano (which last erupted some 10,000 years ago), the geography here is quite different to most of what we've seen in recent weeks, and it was a pleasant change not to be surrounded by sugar cane fields!

As a result of the volcano, the Tablelands boast a spectacular array of mountains, waterfalls and crater lakes – every 5 miles or so there's another brown tourist sign (they're the same as in the UK) inviting you to turn off and admire another natural feature. We were quite spoiled in the two days we spent there. We started with the 'Falls Circuit' near Millaa Millaa, on a whistle-stop tour of 3 sets of waterfalls, each more impressive than the last. You can actually go swimming in the pool at the bottom of Millaa Millaa, the biggest of the 3, but as the sun was setting as we reached it, we decided to give it a miss. Instead we opted for a dip the following morning in Lake Eacham, part of the Crater Lakes National Park. It was pretty chilly, but the brevity of our swim was more the result of an irrational fear about there being crocodiles in the water, when in fact the most dangerous animal we actually saw was a baby turtle.

We visited a 500 year old fig tree, known locally as the Curtain Fig (because it vaguely resembles a curtain). Figs have a nasty habit of latching on to the trees around them and gradually killing them off (hence the name, Strangler Figs) but the results are pretty spectacular – long tendrils of branch snaking in every direction.

Best of all the natural features we saw was Mossman Gorge, even though I thought a gorge was a mountain, and so was expecting to see something completely different! The Mossman River tumbles its way over and around huge granite boulders that line the gorge, creating freshwater swimming holes. It's a great place for sunbathing and swimming.

As well as the plethora of natural features, there are also a number of villages in the area. Some of them are barely more than a couple of houses either side of a single street, but others have a bit more to them. Atherton, the 'capital' of the Tablelands, is home to the Crystal Caves, an underground cavern showcasing the mineral collection of a Frenchman and his family, featuring crystals from all over the world. We didn't actually visit owing to the exorbitant entrance fee, but I imagine it would be a pretty surreal experience, featuring as it does the 'Magic Spheres' exhibition (“NEW for 2010, the Magic Spheres presents rare minerals in a totally new and mesmerising way”). Instead, we did do the tourist thing in Mareeba, the most commercial of the Tablelands' centres [and the closest to Cairns – no coincidence there] visiting both a coffee factory / museum (“the only one of its kind in the world!”) and a mango wine producer. We weren't too impressed with either – the mango winery was charging $5 for every taste which didn't result in a purchase, so I can't tell you what it's like – but the free chocolate samples at Coffee World were pretty good. Much more enjoyable was the Mungalli Creek Dairy, a biodynamic cheese and yoghurt producer. I still don't know what biodynamic production actually is but their chai yoghurt with honey was delicious – and has since been very good with muesli of a morning.

Queensland north of Bundaberg seems a lot like the American mid-West – filled with small towns, all built on a grid system, populated with squat purpose-built buildings. It feels like you've been transported back in time to the mid-1950s.

This is definitely the working part of the state. As we learned in Bundaberg, the dominant industry is sugar cane, and we drove past more fields of sugar cane all the way up the coast. Sugar cane trains regularly sped by along the railroads, as it's currently crop harvesting time over here. A visit to the Sugar Industry Museum (no really, it was fascinating) taught us that Australia is the second biggest global exporter of sugar, second only to Brazil. Although mechanisation has gone some way to modernise the industry, it still seems pretty traditional – much like the towns the workers live and drink (Bundy) in.

After a while, all these towns started to merge together a bit, but here are a few of our highlights:

Gympie (seriously) is a former gold-rush town, which reached its peak in the mid-19th century as the first gold mining town in Queensland. Today it is home to such gems as the 'Hair Force One' hairdressers and 'A Man's Toybox' – which is a tractor store, before anyone gets any other ideas.

Maryborough was actually the hometown of PL Travers, who wrote Mary Poppins. This appears to be its sole note-worthy feature; aside from this, it's just another quaint market town.

Rockhampton, or 'Rockie' as it's affectionately known to locals, prides itself on being the Beef Capital of Australia. There are apparently, some 2M cows within 250km of the town, and to celebrate this fact, the powers that be have commissioned...wait for it....6 life-size plastic cows around the town's main streets. It didn't exactly match up to Bath's pigs back in the UK, but we did amuse ourselves for some, oh, 10 minutes trying to find them all.

We learned that boozy Mackay is considering closing its main street of a weeknight in order to dissuade drunken teens from hanging around and making a nuisance of themselves. Considering how little there is to do there, it's hardly surprising that they are turning to alcohol – we were just amazed it wasn't anything stronger. It does have a nice beach though.

Bowen amused us with its 'Bowenwood' sign up on the hill as you drive into the town. Someone on the council clearly has a sense of humour.

Townsville. What is the point of Townsville? Seriously? Allegedly the 'second biggest town in northern Queensland,' we struggled to find its centre. Were it not for the free internet in the library we would've struggled to fill half an hour. But perhaps I'm just being unkind, and there's a thriving....something....going on there somewhere that we just missed.

Much more to my liking was Innisfail, a town from the 1920s. When most of the (timber) buildings were destroyed in a cyclone in 1918, the people decided to rebuild in stone, in keeping with the fashion of the day. As a result, the whole place is constructed in an art deco style – lots of rounded edges, portholes and sunbeams. In order to keep things consistent, all new buildings have to be designed in the same way, and so the effect is like being on a film set. James was less than impressed and stayed in the car, but I insisted on doing the walking tour of the main street, to fully appreciate the place.

Much more exciting than most of the towns (Innisfail excepted) were the giant objects which Australia has erected as random 'tourist attractions' in this part of the world. We first read about them in Bill Bryson's 'Down Under' and had I not now seen a few with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed they existed. The giant objects tend to be something which locals believe sums up the character of their village or town. So far we've seen a giant mango and a wellington boot, to commemorate 'the wettest town in Queensland.' Tully received some 7.9m of rain in 1950, thus beating out Innisfail and Babington to the title. The giant boot is exactly 7.9m tall, and you can climb an internal spiral staircase to reach the top and get great views....of the sugar cane factory opposite. Apparently there is a giant lobster and also a giant koala somewhere around here too. I live in hope of seeing them before we leave.

We were lucky enough to spend two incredible days sailing around the Whitsunday Islands in a racing yacht called the Iceberg. For the sailing enthusiasts amongst you (Tom) it was a 52 foot fractionally rigged sloop, originally built for the 1992 Sydney to Hobart Boat Race, which it competed in for four consecutive years. Neither of us had ever been on a proper sailing boat before and so we were pretty excited.

We were a little nervous initially as the weather was not great: overcast with a changeable wind, which made the sea pretty choppy. On the first morning we motored out through the waves with our sails down. Everyone was starting to feel a little bit seasick, and so our first lunch was a fairly quiet affair. However, the weather gods were smiling upon as, as the skies cleared up and the sun came out in the early afternoon. And so we saw the Whitsundays in their absolute best conditions – blue azure seas and clear skies during the day, starry skies at night.

The Whitsundays are made up of some 60 islands off the coast of Airlie Beach. Almost all of them are partially or completely designated as national park, and only a handful are actually open to the public at all. As a small boat (just 12 passengers on board), we had close access to some of the islands' highlights, which most bigger boats are not allowed near. The most famous of these is Whitehaven Beach, a 6km stretch of white sands and blue seas – we were the only people on the beach, with the exception of the owners of a helicopter which landed moments before us. Alright for some.

There was also time for a 'bonus beach' on our second morning. The Langford Sand Spit is a stretch of sand between Hayman and Hook Islands which only appears at low tide. This was a natural paradise, with turtles and stingray swimming in the shallows. Our trip here followed a morning of impromptu whale watching from the boat – July to October is whaling season, when pregnant humpbacks come inland to give birth. We saw about 8 or 9 whales in fairly close proximity, including one who, showing off, spent a good 10 mins with her fin in the air. It was an amazing sight.

But the absolute highlight had to be the snorkelling. We had two snorkel stops in all, both on the fringes of the Great Barrier Reef. The best of these was a stop just off Blue Pearl Beach on Whitsunday Island. The water was crystal clear and so we saw shoals and shoals of colourful fish, including yellow-tailed fusiliers, sergeant fish and parrotfish. But most impressive was the enormous Napoleon Reef Wrasse, a fish bigger than me which was happily swimming among us. It's left us feeling incredibly excited about our upcoming diving trip further north.

A Bogan = An Australian cross between a redneck and a chav

Bundy = Bundaberg Rum, Bogan drink of choice

Much of the north of Queensland is given over to sugar cane farming. The industry has been going strong ever since the 1770s when cane was brought over by the First Fleet. The plant was supremely suited to the rich coastal soil and sunshine of the north – Highway 1 cuts through miles and miles of sugar cane farms on the way north to Cape Tribulation.

Where there is sugar, there is rum. Having discovered the spirit during their West Indian endeavours, rum became the drink of choice for British colonialists in the 18th century. Rum was therefore very much a part of life in 'New Holland', especially for the convicts and navy types who made up most of the original settlers. Taxes from rum sales built most of Lachlan Macquarie's famous civic buildings that we saw in Sydney.

With this vibrant market in mind, in 1885 Mr Frederick W. Buss proposed to a group of local sugar millers that they club together and build a rum distillery to generate some extra cash from the otherwise wasted mollasses – a by-product of their refining. Despite burning to ground twice within the space of 50 years, the distillery was a great success and still exists on the same site, next to the Millaquin Mill on the outskirts of the town of Bundaberg.

Having heard a bit about the rum brand from our friend Kate, both Sarah and I were looking forward to visiting the distillery on our road trip up the coast.

The distillery is as straight-up and no-nonsense as the brand. No smoke & mirrors here. Rolling up the dirt track to the front gates we the raw chopped cane shunted past us in dusty cane trains. On the tour we were taken into the working distillery and saw the Olympic swimming pool-sized vats where they store molasses, their column and pot-stills, the bonded warehouse where they age their rum in giant 60,000l barrels and the small bottling line where they package their main brands.

There was also an interesting museum section which displayed historical advertising for the brand. Bundy's big breakthrough came in the mid 80s when the marketing manager introduced a new logo and label for the rum that, inexplicably, featured a polar bear. The bear has since become so iconic that no-one seems to ask why he was chosen as the front-man for an Australian rum made in sub-tropical Queensland...

Sarah and I both enjoyed tasting the finished result in the Bundy bar. We found Bundy Original to be pretty rough straight up (bloody soft Poms!), and much preferred the new Bundy 'Red' which is filtered and has some added vanilla for smoothness. We bought a couple of tinnies for the road and after a break for lunch to let the buzz die down to legal levels, we drove off into the sunset.

Like the Gold and Sunshine coasts, Noosa appears to be something of a retirement community, albeit an incredibly premium one. If the Sunshine Coast is like Florida, then Noosa would be the Florida Keys. It also appears to be a popular holiday destination, judging by the numbers of people we saw enjoying week-long breaks. Filled with gourmet restaurants and boutique clothing stores, we could definitely understand why.

We only had time for an overnight stop before it was time to head on up the coast, but we made the most of it by booking in for another surf lesson. On recommendation, we'd booked with Merrick's Surf School – Merrick being an ex-Aussie champion surfer, who now runs a surf school from the back of a van in a car park. We were a little concerned, especially with 5 of us in the class, and a slightly delayed start, that our second lesson wouldn't match up to the first. However, there was no need to fear – if anything, this lesson was even better. Our instructor was a laid-back surfer dude from Newquay called Tim, and although we were given a little bit more free reign to catch our own waves, he gave us great feedback about how to improve after each ride.

I also discovered my surfing skills weren't in fact a fluke, but that I am actually a fairly competent novice surfer. As well as standing up to catch a few waves, I even managed a pretty impressive-looking 'backside run along a long right-hander' (or so I'm told), which prompted compliments not only from a couple of silver-haired female boogie boarders, but also from James, who I think was a little bit jealous. A surfing holiday could definitely be on the cards in the near future.......

In the 70s my grandpa's brother Jack Griffiths emigrated from Wales to Australia with his wife Enid and their kids Pam and Lynn. The family flourished, and there are now two more generations living in the area of Tweed Heads.

(They weren't the only Griffithses to move down under. Over the last couple of weeks I've been shocked by the number of Griffiths Streets, shops and even islands dotted around!)

Tweed Heads is all of 40 minutes drive from Byron Bay, so our first morning in the surfer town I rang Aunt Enid out of the blue and at very short notice we arranged that Sarah and I would pop around to say hello the following day.

We spent the intervening night testing the limits of our campervan by sleeping in a motorway lay-by – a trick not to be repeated – so were most receptive to the spoiling we received at Aunt Enid's the next day. Despite having celebrated her 90th birthday earlier this year (by travelling 200km into the outback in a campervan), she had clearly been slaving away in the kitchen all morning. Soon after we arrived we were having high tea complete with chocolate cake, Victoria sponge, an apple tart and last but definitely not least...Welsh cakes!

Everyone was there to meet us. Pam, Lynn, Pam's daughter Elizabeth, her husband Mike and their baby boy Charlie. Lynn regaled us with stories of going to Sully Primary School with my mum as we sat out on the balcony and watched trawlers and dolphins in the river below.

After tea we took a drive into town to see the state border and what was one of Uncle Jack's favourite walks. Half of the town is in New South Wales – the part called Tweed Heads – and the other half is in Queensland – Coolangatta. We parked up next to the border and walked around the 'head' itself, criss-crossing between states. Below us crowds of bobbing surfers in the bay, and in the distance to the north the high-rises of Surfer's Paradise floated like a mirage.

Not having really understood the scale of Australia, we were planning on driving on from Tweed Heads to Noosa that evening. On sharing our plan we were met with sceptical looks, and it was explained to us that Noosa is a good five hour drive away. With very little persuasion, we agreed to stay the night at Mike and Elizabeth's house and tackle the drive in the morning. We had a wonderful evening being entertained by Mike, Elizabeth and Charlie. We traded travelling stories with Mike and Liz and they told us all about their time in the UK, and Charlie presented us with various of his favourite toys and also showed us his brand new racing car bed. Pam then brought by a 'back up' casserole she had prepared and we went to bed in a luxurious double bed in the guestroom glowing with the warmth of their hospitality (and wine).

Thanks again guys for having us!