It's official, and I know it might come as a surprise, but I've finally decided I'm not a very good budget traveller. From next year onwards there will be no hostels, shared kitchens, bathrooms or dormitories, no carrying everything you might possibly need for a year, none of it. And, no bikes, no camping and no small boats, but that's beside the point. Yep, from next year, if we can't affored to stay somewhere nice, we just won't go! Of course, that doesn't mean we'll stay in resorts and just see a three-mile radius of the airport, it just means we won't have to beg for sheets, and hopefully the places we stay will be clean and not smell of feet.

Mikey had a cunning plan regarding cooking today, so we didn't have breakfast, but went into town instead. I picked up my photos (slightly disappointing, the 100 ISO films I used were very flat and a little over-exposed) and then we went to find a post office to send a few things home. But post offices seem not to open at the weekend. We also looked for the American Express office to redeem our final travellers' cheques into US dollars (which wasn't where it was supposed to be, so we didn't find it) and had a bit of a walk round town. At lunchtime, 1pm, to be precise, we went back to the hostel to cook lunch - they finish cleaning the kitchen at 1. So we had a big lunch, made sandwiches for later (still had to use our own tea towel to wash up cos even the clean ones looked like they might walk out of the place on their own) but we'd thwarted them!

We had a look on the internet for the best way to get to Cairns slowly, and then bought a Greyhound bus ticket that lasts for 30 days and will get us from Brisbane to Cairns with as many stops as we want. Then we went back to the hostel, had our picnic in our room, and read for a while before bed.