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To begin, I suppose I should briefly explain what the Joshua Foundation is all about. If you want a more detailed description, you can check out the website (www.thejoshuafoundation.co.uk).

In 1998, this charity was set up in memory of Joshua Cornelius, a seven-year-old boy that died of a fatal rare cancer. Since then, TJF has been bringing experience into the lives of children and their families who are affected by cancer. These include mainly visits to Disneyland, or individual experiences (one little girl got to visit the set and cast of Harry Potter) that help to take their minds off their illness and allow them to do what they have always wanted to do, before it is too late.

We, in the Oz experience, each raised over £2000 to fund TJF's experiences, and for this in July 2006 we were sent out to Australia to undertake conservation work and allow us to meet some of the children that inspired us throughout our fundraising.

Most of the team members had come in groups of friends all over the UK, so they knew each other well. But I came alone, along with a few others, and we stuck together for the journey. We also hung out with the only two lads that had come in our team, which we thought quite unfair on them, as the other team, the skippies, were mainly boys. We also kind of thought that they would consider themselves lucky travelling with a group of girls!

When I got onto the plane at Heathrow, I knew that we were in for a long flight, but I had no idea just how difficult it was going to be to do just the simplest things. Not meaning to bore you readers, but there were times when just the little things annoyed me; there was always a queue for the loos and those that were in took forever! It was impossible to get any sleep (a few of us took sleeping pills) and when we did sleep, the air hostesses would wake us up for the food or if the seatbelt light came on, even though they could see we were wearing them already!!!!

Right, now that that is out of my system, I can tell you about our stop-over at Singapore. To this day, I still couldn't tell you where Singapore is on the atlas, but I will look it up. The moment we stepped off the plane, we were hit by a wave of muggy heat that was unbearable but, thankfully, moist. We were all sweating as we made our way to the hotel and on arrival we all agreed that the air-conditioning was a god-send. Our hotel was in a place called Robertson Quay, right next to the Singapore River, which was lovely and even the tacky I-was-painted-by-hippies bridge at the end of our street looked very scenic at night. We all went down to the outdoor restaurant next door and even then it was warm enough to have been summer daytime in England.

The next day, all of us took a river cruise all the way down to the harbour. The water looked absolutely perfect and my only regret is that we had no time to go swimming. The skyscrapers were breathtaking; a girl sat behind me counted fifty-eight floors on one building and the other floors were hidden from view from a smaller building. The entire cruise was commentated by a very camp sounding American, telling us to "imagine" what Singapore must have looked like when it was first built. When he got to the part of reading the poem about Singapore river and encouraging us to "be inspired and write our own!" we had all had too much of him and we just burst out laughing. Unfortunately for the other boat, they didn;t get the gay tour guide, for which they were very disappointed 3nodding

The shopping centre in Singapore was great as well, but I could not understand why the other group were so fascinated with clothes shopping. Half the shops we saw were avaliable in England, and for this reason our group busied ourselves in the souvenir shops and local restaurants rather than adding to a wardrobe half of which we would have to leave behind when we got to Australia anyway.

We dreaded getting on the plane again that evening, but we were also relieved, because we were now less than eight hours from Brisbane.