Doing nothing does nothing

Today is the 4th day of our journey.

A chill day. Drank 3 liters of coffee, oscillated between the terrace and the sofa, and just did nothing. At 1:00 PM local time, we finally had something healthy for breakfast - fruit with yogurt. Yummy, it was something delicious again after the Far Eastern meals.

Now here are the facts I promised yesterday:

Queensland is one of 7 states, located in the northeast, with 7,000 km of coastline and nearly 5 million inhabitants. The capital is Brisbane. Queensland sustains itself economically with sugarcane cultivation, coal mining, sheep and cattle farming, and tourism around the Great Barrier Reef.

Yes, we managed to do it all while chilling - we booked our snorkeling tour for tomorrow. We're excited.

Of course, I'm using the chill time to browse through the travel guide, so that I can always tell you smart things. So today I found out that it only takes about 250 years to civilize and develop a country. Considering that Thomas Cook discovered the island in 1770 and opened it as a penal colony for the British Crown. And that only happened because the Americans became independent and didn't want to accept British convicts.

By the way, the American influence is quite present here. We were in Cairns today, and on the way there, it looked more like a small American town than a British town from a Rosemunde Pilcher film. The Australians should have adopted the English architecture instead of the traffic direction.

Let's get back to Cairns. A nice little town with a long promenade, a small harbor, and many cozy restaurants and bars. You can find seating and barbecue facilities everywhere in the green areas, which everyone can use for free. And since Cairns has tides and no beach, they simply built a free saltwater swimming pool with lounge and beach areas. Something unimaginable for us.

By the way, grilling is very popular here, although the grills look a bit different than ours - at least the public ones and the ones in our hotel. They are square stainless steel pans heated from below. Maybe we didn't have enough patience for our candlelight dinner today and put the meat on too early, but when it was finally crispy, it was already dead. Good thing it was lamb and not a beef steak. We'll try that tomorrow.