Moving to Airlie Beach??

Hi there! It's officially been three weeks of life in our house in Cairns, making our total time here a whole month, and what a whirlwind it has been!

Half of our time can be summed up by either looking for jobs or doing things to be able to look for more jobs, i.e. getting certifications to be qualified to apply for more jobs.

A whole week of our time in Cairns was devoted to getting First Aid certified, Katie getting medically cleared for working in the diving industry, and James getting qualified to be on construction sites. We've realized that here, there is a certification for absolutely everything. There's always another course that you need or a silly certificate that costs a couple hundred dollars.

Even the first aid course was a bit repetitive, as it's not just one course, but James had to do 2 (First Aid + CPR) and Katie had to do 4 (First Aid + CPR + Basic Emergency Life Support + Oxygen). It was an all-day affair with an elderly instructor who had some "traditional" views and a love for Chips Ahoy cookies. He finished an entire box over the day, leaving us to worry if we would have to utilize our CPR skills earlier than anticipated.

We did learn some valuable information that’s different from Canadian First Aid courses, such as how to use pressure bandages for snake or funnel web spider bites.

The following day, Katie went into the city to the doctor's office to be checked out for all of the things to make sure she can dive all the time. For anyone interested, her tympanic membrane is intact and equalizes well, her lung capacity is good, her balance is above average, her eyesight is 6/5, she can hear between 500 and 8000Hz, and the specific gravity of her pee is 1.005. One chest x-ray, a scoliosis scare, and a reassuring call from Dr. Morrison later, and she's cleared for occupational diving!

The certifications didn't stop there, as the next day, James had a white card course from 8 AM to 4 PM on Zoom, where they had to practice putting on hard hats and reflective vests, very critical skills indeed.

So with all of our new certs, we applied for lots of jobs! We are both hoping for jobs in the aquaculture/aquarium industry, with James branching out a little bit into the construction world, and Katie also applying for dive instructor/reef tour positions. We arrived in Cairns still in the rainy season and not quite the start of tourist season, so there aren't tons of positions available, but we are doing what we can! Our housemates are also super helpful in this department! Michael has given us lots of advice about working in science in Cairns and given us some contacts at James Cook University. Brad and Annelise have friends in the boating and reef tourism industry and have given us so much helpful info! We have seriously lucked out with living with them!

We love the house that we're living in so much that it deserves a little rant.

Perk: It's in the best location, with the village of Edge Hill close by, with amazing restaurants and parks around. It's a short walk away from the Cairns Botanical Gardens and the start of multiple hiking trails, which we do at least two of every week. The view from the yellow arrow trail is stunning! When we branched out further and did the blue arrow track, we were greeted with some cool birds, but also the longest/biggest spiders that we've seen yet! (It's hard to tell the scale of the photo, but this spider was at least 15cm/6inches long).

Perk: The balcony of the house also gets BEAUTIFUL sunsets.

Perk: the kitchen is fully equipped, and we've made some pretty tasty meals here, including sushi (our rolling skills are improving), pizza, fried rice, our classic sandwiches, ridiculously tasty coffee, and James made Mongolian beef noodles!

Perk: the people we live with are the best! Aside from the job connections, they are just so much fun to hang out with! Bananagrams, trivia nights, book recommendations, swims in the creek, BBQs, puzzling, chats on the deck. We love our roomies!

Perk: It's not just us that have made friends here, Olga has too! Brad and Annelise left one day and returned with a boat, so now Olga is surrounded by friends down in the garage.

Ok that’s enough of a diversion talking about our house, you'll see why we were getting sappy about it at the end of the post, but the other half of our time has been spent doing all the Cairns fun things: hiking, eating, roaming around the Esplanade, and taking in all that's around us.

We've done some hiking slightly further away than our backyard Botanical Gardens. This week, we hiked up Walshs Pyramid. A 6km return hike, which sounds pretty easy, but there was over 930m of elevation on the 3km up, most of which in the last km of very steep rock scrambles! This hike was TOUGH, but the views were beautiful! On the way back down, we even saw one of our bucket list Australian animals, an echidna! Dripping in sweat, we rewarded ourselves with a trip to the Copperlode Brewery:)

We've also explored the local cuisine scene. Edge Hill has the best Thai restaurant in Cairns, (according to Annelise), and based on our limited experience, we definitely agree! It was super tasty, and Ozmosis, the breakfast place just down the street is very tasty as well!

Finally, we've explored some of the "must-do" things in Cairns, including going to the aquarium and visiting the North Beaches. Cairns is truly such a cool city, with the reef on one side, rainforest mountains on the other, there aren't many places like it!

At this point in the blog we should tell you that we had this whole thing written out and ready to post then we changed our plans in a full 180. So here’s what we were GOING to say…

You've reached the end of the blog, which means it's announcement time!

Katie got a job as a Living Reef Aquarist on Daydream Island! It's very exciting, and she'll be spending her time caring for fish, corals, rays, sharks, and tourists in the massive aquarium lagoon. The downside is that this position is unfortunately not in Cairns... It's 750 km away in the Whitsundays :(

THEN we were going to tell you our plan where Katie was going to move and James was waiting to hear back from a job in Cairns but was also interviewing for a handyman position on Daydream Island. But here is where the180 comes in, he heard back!! He got the position with Cairns Marine as an Aquarist taking care of tons of species of reef fish before they are shipped off to aquariums around the world!!

SO NOW we’ve weighed the pros and cons, consulted our parentals and made a decision. Our plan is to stay in Cairns!! Yay!! This means Katie turned down the job so we won’t be doing long distance, we get to stay in our house that we love with our amazing roommates, we get to continue to explore the beauty of Far North Queensland and we have a whole week before James starts work!!

Oh what to do with this week… we’ll see what we come up with ;) From Eh to Selamat Siang post coming soon!