Airle Beach, Australia : Living life at 16,000ft and boating the Great Barrier Reef

Upon leaving Innisfail it was a long 10 hour journey down the south coast towards Airlie Beach. Despite the tragedy associated with this beautiful resort, it will always remain in my eyes as the most beautiful part of the East Coast. This trip to Airlie didn't let me down either which took a huge load off my mind and my current situation. I wanted to try and remember my last few weeks for all the right reasons. I already had an excursion booked in the form of a boat trip to the Whitsunday Islands that included snorkelling, bush walking and lunch but I wanted to really leave Australia with a bang!

What better way to do this than by conquering my fears and jumping out of a plane and skydiving from 14,000 ft! The excursion company had an amazing winter offer on (saying it's winter it was still 28 degrees).

It wasn't just the excursions that helped make Airlie Beach amazing, it was the people I met there. On both nights I went out and tried Goon for the first time! Let's just say this is the backpackers version of Champagne! Cheap & Cheerful! I got speaking with two girls from London and one in particular became a very good friend. It's just a nice thing when you're travelling to find someone to talk too. On both evenings we played drinking games and both evenings got back extremely late.

The Ocean Rafting Whitsundays tour was out of this world! Not only

did I get to to experience an extremely fast boat working its magic out around the islands, but I also got to see one of the most beautiful of Australia's islands. The sand on the beach was so fine, they said you could clean your jewellery with it and also the waters were so blue you could see the coral and any animals that swam towards us. We saw a giant turtle, huge fish and even a shark! Wow, what an experience!

My final night on the town in Airlie Beach proved to be a fantastic way to say goodbye to the new friends I had made. We had drinking games in our room where at least 10 people came out with us. After copious amounts of drinking, we went to the club and partied all night long. Now the funny thing about this was I woke up tired and hungover for my skydive, but what better way to beat a hangover than jumping 14,000ft from a plane!

With a fear of heights, the reality soon set in. My hands were shaking as I stepped into my harness and when the instructor filmed me my voice got croaky and I started to tear up. I think it was a mixture of emotions for me; fear, excitement, and I think the thing that hit me the most was that this would be part of the final chapters of my life long book.

So it was time to throw the emotions aside and focus on the important thing which was jumping out of this plane. The view on the way up was spectacular and it overlooked all of the beautiful Whitsunday Islands. The higher we got, the more my nerves started to creep in and the moment we got above the clouds was when it really felt real.

All of a sudden, the door opened and before I knew it was hanging on the edge of the plane, before I felt a tap, smiled to the camera and jumped! Wow! What a feeling as we hurtled 200kmh down to earth! It was amazing! After free falling for a while we soon came to the clouds and ploughed through them to reveal the stunning Whitsunday Islands with an almost spray of water vapour from the clouds.

Towards the ground and the parachute opened! This was beautiful as we magically dangled in the air from this parachute! What an amazing experience and what a way to come to the closing stages of the Australian journey. I knew that the next few months for me would prove to be the hardest in my life, so having this to look back on would at least ease the pain just a little.