Diving on the Great Barrier Reef
Well for the last 3 days I have been spending my time on a boat.
Now before we get to far ahead of myself I should tell you that I signed up for a dive course in which we spend 2 days in a pool and then 3 days out on the ocean diving on the great barrier reef. I was looking at doing this ever since I went diving at Busselton. Anyway we did the 2 days playing around in a pool and learning how not to kill ourselves in the open ocean, then we headed out on a boat (aptly nicknamed the "Upchuck Express" for reasons I shouldn't have to explain) we then transferred onto the bigger, nicer 3 story boat where we would be staying. Anyway we went for 2 dives that day and I have to admit my first day on the great barrier wasn't a glowing start. I suited up, checked all of my gear (as the last thing you need is to realize that you forgot to fill up the air tank before you jumped into the water, it is really embarrassing to have to climb back out after jumping in for only 12 seconds) well after I jumped in and swam over to my instructor I felt a stinging sensation across my knuckles. I started to look for the jelly fish and when I spun around I got another sting on my knuckles, but I still couldn't see it, that is when I spotted 1 thin blue strip cross my facemask and I realized it must be tangled in my gear. 
I asked the instructor (Jayne) to have a look for it. Originally she couldn't see it, but then she spotted it, said an appropriate word to mirror my feelings and directed me back to the boat. I should mention that we wear "Stinger suites" which are like wet suits but built to protect us from jelly fish, which is why when it was tangled around me, I only got stung on my hands where the suit wasn't covering my skin. I should also mention that jelly fish stings don't burn as long as the stings are covered in salt water. Which is why when I hit the boat and brought my hands out of the ocean into the rain where they were hit by the cold fresh water I actually shuddered as my hands felt like they were suddenly on fire. The people on the dive deck got the stinger off of me (it turned out to be a blue bottle jelly fish) and sprayed my hands with vinegar to neutralize the stinging sensation. I then continued the dive where we dove, and swam around on the bottom for a while. The objective of the fist dive in the ocean is to just get you used to breathing under water, and swimming with all of the gear. The second dive we started doing some of the skills we learned about in the pool 2 days earlier. After we finished the skills we continued on just swimming around on the coral where we spotted a big barracuda (fish) a moray eel, and 3 sea turtles. At the surface we practiced taking off the scuba gear and then putting it back on (where we disappointed Jayne by having no floundering, panicking or even splashing, something that always happens on this part of the course, she made a comment about missing out on her required entertainment for the day) which is actually a lot 
easier than it sounds. We called an end to the day where we returned to the boat and had supper. We didn't go out on the night dive that night as it would have costed us 60 bucks (For a certified guide to go with us as we were not yet certified divers). That night we got put into our rooms (we got a room each, with a double bed. Oh what a wonderful room, but there was a catch we were on the main floor and that night was refueling night. What happened on refueling night is that once every four weeks the boat drives back into Cairns in the middle of the night, refuels, and re-stocks with all non perishable foods that will be required over the next month. This is usually done around 1 in the morning, and the boat has to be back at the dive site by 5:30 for the 6:00 o’clock dive. 
Well our floor is where they pile all of the stuff before unpacking it on the return trip out. Well that is why throughout the night I heard "Peas", "Corn", "Sugar", along with a whole assortment of other items including frozen chickens. I was still awake on the trip in as I wanted to see the lights of Cairns from the ocean, but I had to admit I wasn't completely able to tune out all of the noise from the loading, but I was only asleep for a little while before I was shook wide awake by a quite voice asking "Where is the beer?" As it would later turn out, it didn't come in on the order and our dive party boat had just become a dry dive boat. Well the next morning at 6 I woke up on my own (the boat was still moving, which meant we were running late). The crew looked exhausted, none of them really slept at all, some had about 2 hours of sleep, including our dive instructor Jayne. This is when we started the, well, acting part. They film you early in the morning, waking up, having a cup of tea, suiting up and jumping in the water. The camera guy asks you how you feel, if you are excited for the dive and that kind of crap. Chris was able to muster enough energy and fake enthusiasm, I who got about 3 hours of sleep that night couldn't muster anything more than a week lipped hi. I could only look at my tea and hope that once I hit the water the cold would blast some feeling back into my sleeping head. We suited up, jumped in (I doing a front flip into the water, which is easier to do than you would think) where we did some more dive skills before returning to breakfast. I came in with a desperate need for a good meal and discovered a very depressing and disappointing breakfast. It consisted of baked beans in tomato sauce, canned spaghetti and oatmeal. I looked at this meal in disbelief recalling the fine supper that was cooked the night before and wondering if I was just having a bad dream. The chef seeing me standing there with a look of shock said that due to the fact he got on board 5 hours ago and had spent most of the night packing stuff away, therefore breakfast was a bit weaker than usual. I nearly cried, and started making my way to the fruit where I loaded up as I couldn't make myself eat tinned spaghetti for breakfast. I had to eat fast as we had to be back in the water by 8 for our last training dive and where the camera man comes with us and issues us our cards under water. Well we suited up, got in the water went for a swim, they issued us our cards and we had to show a lot of enthusiasm and do underwater summersaults, pretend to drink a can of beer, put on sunglasses, and a whole bunch of other crap in order to make the movie better. We also made up these slates and wrote something smart on them. I put down "Ok, who stole my submarine?" along with something philosophical. We swam around a bit more, saw a lion fish (very poisonous) along wit a very big barracuda (over a meter long) before coming back up. We took the 11:00 dive off to relax a bit, had lunch (A great improvement over breakfast) before we met the movie guy at 12:30 so he could show us the movie he had made. We watched it, and it was a good movie, and I was planning on buying it before he showed me the price. What happens is that he sends the movie off to get put onto a DVD and copy write it. They then mails you the DVD in the mail 3 weeks later. The DVD costs 75 bucks a copy, and you can't make any copies of it. I said 75 was way to much for it and I made a note of writing down as much about what happened on this trip so that I wouldn't need a DVD in the future. The camera guy actually looked shocked when we said we weren't going to buy one. Even when I looked at it later, it felt real gimmicky for the amount of money they asked. I am glad I held onto that slate for a couple of hours after the dive so I could take some pictures of it with me on the boat for free. Anyway at 3:00 we moved dive sites, and what the dive crew do during these moves is toss in their fishing lines to see if they can troll for some fish while we move, and one of them caught a yellow fin tuna, a rather big on to. Upon arrival we got ready for the 4:00 dive, our first dive as certified divers, and our first dive without a guide. We geared up, dived in and gave it a go. We went to the reef, swam around, and with the biggest shock of the day, successfully navigated back to the boat under water and popped up just beside the dive deck. But that wasn't all, I finally got my reef shark, my first solo dive and I saw the reef shark that I so desperately wanted on Ningaloo. I even did an underwater dance of true sheer enjoyment. We had supper (a very fine meal full of vegetables and many other fine foods). We then prepared for the highlight of the day, the night dive. Now the night dive is a completely different world when compared to the day, now the nocturnal animals come out, including the reef sharks. But that is another blog for another day, as I don't want to kill you guys with one huge blog. See everyone next time.
I found this really kind of cool, in the middle of the desert these huge statues of the original aboriginals who roamed this land long before we showed up with our car. I looked at them for quite some time before moving on,
I thought that they fit perfectly, you could almost imagine the aboriginals walking along the desert walking with the staffs and children roaming as they had done thousands of years before. Probably the coolist thing I have seen since I left Tennent Creek 3 days earlier. About 200km up the road we hit the Devils Marbles, which also turned out to be a huge dissapointment as we saw about 30 of these types of rock formations between Exmouth and Karajini.We continued on our journey and hit Tennent the next day, where I had to get 4 new bolts for the skid plate because I noticed when I changed the oil last time that they were stripped from overtightening (not by me I might add). Well we turned our car onto a new road and pointed our car East into the Rising sun and headed towards Cairns. We camped in a roadside turnout and headed out early this morning and we crossed into Queensland for the first time. 
It was a strange feeling that I can't really describe, maybe it was the thought that Easter Friday is in 2 days and I will be spending Easter on the road this year, on the flat plains of Queensland. This place reminds me a lot of Southern Alberta, making me a bit home sick. It also signals the last leg of the journey, as this is our last state we have to go through before we head back into New South Wales, something I both want to end and at the same time continue on. I said it was a hard feeling to express, so if you are confused now, you might be getting about 10% of what is going through my head. It is getting kind of funny though, my dad calls me regularly (which isn't the funny part), but he calls just when I hit cell reception. I will drive three days with nothing, and just as I hit a town (usually I am filling the car with gas at the time) and my phone will ring and there will be dad with his weekly news report from home, which I do love to hear. Of course it is kind of funny that my thoughts have been wandering as of late to what my future direction in life would be. I have been giving serious thought as of late if as to if I really want to go back into land surveying. This thought was building years ago as I sat in my office twiddling my thumbs on my own, alone. One profession that did tweek my intrest was Pycyatry, but since I wasn't even close to be smart enough to become a doctor I threw it out, but it still lingured on. Now thanks to Lena I discovered that Pycology is almost exactly the same with the exception that Phycologists aren't doctors, and you don't need to be a doctor. Suddenly a new road looks open, but before I jump to any conclusions, and before my parents pick up the phone cursing to themselves that they never should have let me go to Australia as they now have a vegitarian Phycologist that might not be home for anouther 4 years, I am just thinking about it right now, don't get your fingers in a knot as you punch in my long phone number. This trip was supposed to be a mould breaking exercise for me. Expecing your next phone call.
Anyway I made a comment that this gravel road was probably going to be nothing but solid washboard and rougher than hell. Chris said it wouldn't and that I was being cynical (which I was as I was thinking I would be having a lot more fun on the east coast), however I turned out to be right as we hit this gravel road at 80k an hour and he turned to look at me to say "See it is smooth as silk" which was stupid as it was starting to get dark, and if he had kept his eyes on the road he would have noticed that there were huge ruts, pot holes, and washboard. 1 minute later Chris was down to 40 and I was looking for my missing teeth that had been shaken out of my lower jar. In the end that section of road took us around 3.5 hours to drive, in the dark. As you can imagine I was less than pleased, however I wasn't driving so it was easier to handle. I just stuck my head out the window and felt the wind on my face. We camped at Kings Canyon and the next morning we went to look at it. They claim it has the best views in Australia, and I will gladley admit whoever wrote that must not have traveled around Australia a whole lot as it was completely underwelming. The canyon at Exmouth was more awe inspiring than Kings Canyon, and it isn't even on the tourist map. We then drove to Uluru (Areys Rock), where I discovered that whey wanted 25 bucks a head to enter the park. I was less than impressed by the price tag, but I bought a ticket anyway. Once I bought the ticket I had a read, in which they request that you respect the aboriginal request not to climb the rock.
So in the end I paid 25 bucks to walk around the base of Uluru, something that impressed me about as much as an empty beer can in the ditch. Chris took about 100 pictures, I took 1. It was a lot like Wave rock in WA, but with less personality, and 25 bucks more expensive. Uluru just didn't have a story, or if it did I couldn't find it, and in the end we respected the aboriginal request and didn't climb it. Once again I was right before I came down here, Uluru was just boring and overblown. We saw the sun set on Uluru, which was also really dissapointing, as when I looked at the clouds they looked more impressive on the sunset than the rock. 
That night we camped at the Caravan park and the next day went and saw Kata-Tjuta, a mountain similair to Uluru about 25km away from The Rock. Here is the first time I rose from my auto pilot and my eyes found something that actually had character. It was a bunch of little mountains with these green vallleys. 
This was way cooler than Uluru and Kings combined. Was it worth the 2200km trip out of the way to go and see, well no, really the center was disapointing. The funnest time I had was when me, Niko, and Mark made a congo line them playing bad music on the guitars and me practicing the Digeredoo. In reality, if we didn't have these 2 guys with us giving life back to the car, I think I would have left Chris at his rock and made a bee-line to Cairns where I hope to have a better time. I really wish I had these days on the East coast.
Kakadoo became know worldwide because of the aboriginal rock art there, but more recently as being the place where crocodile Dundee was filmed. I spent a while looking at the aboriginal rock art when a tour group came up and the guid told the story the art told, then he told me that this art is over 1000 years old. I snorted a bit as one of the ladies said "The paint looks incredibly good for 1000 years old" The guide replied "Doesn't it though, it has survived the exposure to the elements." That is when I started to laugh and had to walk away for a few minutes. I later ran into that lady and she asked my why I was laughing at that. I told her to read the sign on the path on the way back. That is when you will find out the the paintings date back to around a thousand years ago, but this one in particular was re-painted in 1964 by one of the aboriginals. It is actually a common practice for them, they re-paint the fading colours to help preserve their history, but I couldn't stop myself laughing at the guide, who I wonder if he read the sign or just refused to tell everyone the whole truth. I went back to the painting as Chris, Niko, and Mark went to got see a look out. I starred at one of the paintings a while remembering the story the guide told me and wondered how acurate it was. 
Story's get distorted over time, some get lost and others spring up to replace it, but mostly each person who tells it adds or takes away from the original. If you weren't there the day the painting was first put on the wall, you don't know what it actually means. I think back to other older writings, and how they are finding different meanings and different interpretations to those same stories, Troy, the bible, even Dracula and Frankenstien. The meaning has changed over time so I looked at the painting and wondered at what story I would make for this painting if I were someone who just stumbled accross it. I am still working on the story, and I might get it up shrotly if I can get it down. Will get back to everyone later about that. So we spent the first night in Kakadoo, and then went swimming in of the park's water holes the next morning. It wasn't spectacular by any means, Litchfield was simmilair, and I love Karinjini way better, just for the cool walkes to get down into the pools. We drove down to Katherine and then on special request out to Kathrine Gorge where we walked an hour out to one of the coolest pools I have yet to swim in, or more importantly dive in. I finally found my cliff dive. It was only about 5 meters high, but it was so fun, especially with the water fall in the background. 
I climbed up the rock face, and threw myself off almost instantly diving into the water, and god did that feel good. The air rushing past your ears as you speed towards the water, and the calm just before the impact. We took lots of pictures, incuding this one by me in the water. 
Best shot of the day by far. Anyway we swam for a while before packing up for the walk back to the car. Chris, and his new Henchman Niko decided they wanted to take the shortcut. It was already 6:00, and I was looking at what they were calling a short cut. I looked at Chris and gave him a look of "I don't like this idea." and voiced my disaproval starting with the fact that:
He also said that a true digereedoo is actually hollowed out by termites, which I didn't know. We talked for a while and then went looking for a cool smoothie (as recomended by Walter) before meeting up with Niko for the first time. We met Niko and Chris and him went off together to chat, I decided that I wanted an afternoon to myself and went looking for a nice place to relax. So I ended up walking by the Digeredoo store again when I ran into Walter on his smoke break. We got chatting and I discovered he was a rock hound (rock collector) he then told me where all of the good places to go looking for different types of rocks, including opals, jems, and even some dimonds. It was a fun talk, in which I have circled on my map all the places he mentioned. Well we just kept talking and that is when I learned more in that one hour than in 15 of the museums. Here are some of the stuff he talked about.