The Land Down Under

I am really enjoying being in this country called Oz. It is beautiful, huge, and has almost no people . (Oz is slightly smaller than the United States but only has half the population of California.) I have no funny stories to report; I just wanted to give you a sense of where I am. I started with five days in Sydney (SE Oz) and then flew up to Cairns (NE Oz), where I spent two days diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
An eleven-hour bus ride later, I find myself in Airlie Beach, about to get on a racing sailboat to explore The Whitsundays islands (see picture on the left). I will eventually work my way down to Brisbane by next Monday, when I fly to New Zealand.