Executing cgi script from applet

Hi all,
Im having trouble executing my cgi script from an applet I've written. Hopefully someone can tell me what Im doing wrong.
My main goal is to write some data from an applet to a file using a simple cgi script. For example if you type this URL into your browser:
http://www.flyaustralia.net/cgi-bin/test1.cgi?test
it will write 'test' to a file called 'wd.txt' at:
http://www.flyaustralia.net/wd.txt
The problem is i cant seem to execute this script from my applet, or at least it doesn't seem to do anything. Here's the main bit of code:

public void CGIPost(String data) throws Exception {
URLurl = new URL("http://www.flyaustralia.net/cgi-bin/test1.cgi?5555");
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
connection.setRequestMethod("GET");
connection.setDoInput(true);
connection.connect();
System.out.println("opoening connection to test1.cgi and sending 5555: URL is " + url);
}
The applet is loaded onto the server and no exceptions are thrown when running the applet. However, nothing is written to wd.txt.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Rich
P.S.you can test the applet here:
http://www.flyaustralia.net/Test1.htm
Here is the cgi script if it is a help:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
$data=$ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
open(OUT,">/home/flyaustralia/www/wd.txt");
print OUT $data;
close(OUT);
print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
print <<EndHTML>
<html><head><title>Hello!</title></head>
<body>
<h2>Hello!</h2>
The string sent was $data

</body>
</html>
EndHTML