Last night at Mission Beach

We've now spent a week and a half at The Sanctuary, working 5hrs a day for food and accommodation. We're basically at the top of a hill, surrounded by rainforest and next to the sea. The buildings are only accessable by 4WD or a 600m stomp up a steep track through mozzie, spider and lizard infested wilderness, so it feels fairly isolated, despite still being close to town.

We've been working in the kitchen (barefoot, a real delight; health and safety is of top priority here), as well as sweeping leaves from all the paths, mopping and general scut work. Its fairly easy, and there are plenty of opportunities for nap time, disguised as 'cleaning the staff toilets'. Speaking of which, the staff accommodation is right underneath the yoga room, so we are woken up nearly every morning between 6 and 8 by thumping banging and scraping right above our heads. We have no idea what they're doing up there but it sounds quite strenuous.

Last night we decided to watch Paranormal Activity 3 before bed. A horror film. While we are miles away from civilisation, in full knowledge that our doors dont lock and we could be attacked by serial killers at any moment. Outstanding plan...

There are more spiders here than I am comfortable with. Huge ones, usually in our new friend Liams room. Huntsmans, Wolf Spiders and Golden Orbs apparently. All I know is that they are the size of my hand, their legs are too thick, and if their eyes are big enough for me to know what direction they are looking in then I don't want them anywhere within 25 metres of me. Our method of dealing with these issues consists of 5 of us chasing the large spider with a bucket, while trying not to scream like little girls. Once the spider is in the bucket, it gets released on the other side of the hill, or we feed it to the monster spider down the road.

We also got our first bit of paid work since entering Oz; toilet cleaning at a nearby caravan park on weekends, $45 each for 3 hours work, not too bad!

Tomorrowwe move out- heading north again on a ponderously slow journey towards Cairns, stopping at every National Park and waterfall on the way. Its 2hours from here to Cairns, but it will probably take us 4 days.