Sydney

MOM . . . That is why the birds love us!
The boat ride and dads old stompin grounds from the mission!

Now, after watching Finding Nemo, I now know why they made the seaguls always say mine! Cause, that is exactly what they did! And they were not dumb! They hung around our food and looked for every chance they could, the second after I snapped this photo I heard a gasp and then a "you crazy birds!!" from another gentlemen, if you notice, They waited till we were distracted and dove in for our friends food, there is a bird on the far right in this frame! It was pretty hilarious! and, they did win. And got away with his potatoe quishe stuff, quite frankly, I think the birds enjoyed it more than I did, it wasn't my favorite dish over there. Luckily I was eating chow mein noodles at this moment.
And once again, but with Beauties in front!

The ever so famous Sydney Opera House

Sorry! Takin forever! Our last day in Australia we went to the Sydney harbor. By far my favorite event! It was simply divine! We got a tour of the opera house, the history of it, and then we took a ferry ride in the harbor, and went down little shops, and had just a delightful little time. We ended it by crossing the harbor bridge (which has a toll on it) 6 times, because we were not listening to our gps the way we should have. But, we finally got to where we needed to be, and the best part for Dad was that we found a ship that they had replicated after buying all of the blue prints for from the 17th century, it was a lot smaller than the ship that we are working on as a company, but it was very neat to see how everything went together on the riggings and throughout the quarters. It even got to sail around the world on a voyage and ended up back where it had been made. It was pretty fun for dad and us. And, our gps 'Matilda' as we called her led us safely back to our hotel afterwards to get ready for our 16 hour flight the next day that would only take one hour. We left Australia Thursday Morning at 9:00 aussie time, and got home at 10:15 AM Utah time. Man, all of us were pretty wackie w jet lag. it wasn't rare to find all of us sitting around awake at 4 in the morning still waiting to get tired. (if you notice some of my blogs . . . the times they were updated . . . yep, just waiting for the eyes to even think about drooping.) Pretty fun times!

Diving

Just a taste of the waves out at Fish Rock.

The 5 foot wing-span ray under a cliff.


Gray Nurse Shark

6 foot Wobby Gong; the only shark that can bite its own tail (don't grab it's tail! they can't let go of what they bite because of the way their jaw is made). You will have quite the little surprise and get a good laugh from the people on the boat after you go up to show them what you got stuck to your arm after you grabbed it's tail, so that they can pry it off of you. (Our boat captain told us that a guy they took out diving got a little baby one, no longer than his forearm, stuck on to his bottom lip after attempting to get a picture of him kissing it! Awesome! Then the next day in the news papers . . . "Man bit by shark out on the reef!" they just forgot to mention how big the shark was and why it bit him).

My dive buddy, If you look up above the rock he is holding, you can see the outline of another shark.
The sharks were pretty curious and just followed us from a 'safe' distance the entire first dive at where the EAC meets another current. These are Gray Nurse Sharks, they have retractable jaws that when they bite things there teeth roll back into there mouth so it is hard to let go of things, they usually don't chew anything wider than there jaw for this reason, same with the wobby gong, they can't let them go, so, humans are basically not on the menu for them.

Fish

Channel . . . very neat to go through

All of the pictures were from the first day of diving.
What an awesome Experience!

Some of THE Coolest (and coldest) dives I have ever been on!

While in Aussie, We did a couple of fantastic dives. we set up a couple of dives with some dive masters that we found over there. It was pretty neat! (Did I mention it was their winter though) BURR!!!!!

Second day of Diving:
So, we jump in a pretty decent size boat, turn to the crew and ask how the diving is going to be "Oh . . . (aussie accent) it'll be beautiful! Weather should cooperate, and the water will be fantastic!! . . . Superb Conditions!" Well . . . Imagine this . . .before we even got out of the harbor/river that we launched the boat into, our dive master throws us some life jackets and we oblige and put them on. about five minutes later, he puts his on. "strange?" i think to myslef, "There is no law saying we need life jackets" at this time in the boat ride. Well, not even a minute after the boat driver gets his jacket on, we get out of the safety of the harbor and start hitting swells that any professional surfer would kill for. Then he starts going on about how many boats sink there a year pretty casually and lah-dah-dah . . . . Okay, To draw you a picture, my father is standing in the boat, which makes his feet about 5 feet above the water line naturally, the waves were above my dads head from where I was sitting. Rolling waves that were crashing into the rocks that we had just passed indicating the end of the harbor. He has to gun it up these waves so that we can get down the other side, they are curling all around us! So . . . We came to a wave that started curling on top of us, it was pretty much higher than the ceilings in most kitchens. And It was CURLING!!!!! We gunned the engine up it with the bow pointing in the sky, the boat went almost vertical, and had no where else to go except plummet down the other side when the wave went under neath us with a crash, I think I was not the only one who wanted to turn back at this point. But, needless to say, we looked at him, and my dad said "You Aussies are Nuts!!" replied with a chuckle and said "no worries mates, this is the worst of it, only 17 more kilometers until Fish Rock." while the first mate is going on about how calm it will be when we get to the site "Oh, it'll be a mill pond out there!" Umm . . . there definitely weren't any curling waves, but we were pretty rocky rolly, the waves were huge! And the driver kept talking about how the waves usually kick up a bit more in the afternoon! (Oh goodie, i can't wait until after the dive to head back in) I am just really glad I took some sea sick pills a bit before the embarkation. But, going in was okay, we got to surf the waves back in on top of them instead of fight em.

So, that was getting out to the sight. When we got there we geared up and jumped in. It definitely took my breath away! A bit colder than what I am used to! Oh, it was cold! But, nonetheless, we endured with our 10 millimeters of wet suit on, and sharks skin shirts) so, we descended, swam around this huge rock, enjoying the fish, and the somewhat stirred up water, but hey, still better then the dominican on a good day in visibility. The dive master turned around to me and cupped his hear to have us listen. We could hear hump-back whales singing. We swam around the rock and through some canyons, and got to the mouth of a cave after seeing a couple gray nurse sharks, and entered, how awesome! They have these sharks that they call Wobbygongs or carpet sharks that are basically bottom dwellers, and just lay on the ground, they definitely don't bug you if you don't bug them. but they are quick, before my dad and I knew what they were, we saw one sleeping out in the open, and he went up and tickled it's back, he woke up quite startle and swam very quickly away. But, They were sleeping when we were above them in a 7 foot-tall cave that went under and through this huge rock! It was pretty night to shine your light and see probably 20 of these sharks just lying on the bottom, we came to one section where a 9 footer had this huge lobster beside his mouth, with a bunch more shells of lobsters behind him, that was a bit creepy, but still pretty cool. The surge in the cave was kinda neat to, you barely needed to kick, and you would rush forward, and then just hold on so you stay in that place, and then go forward again. It was fun. Then, we started ascending up a a part of the cave that was basically a large flat tube going to the next portion.

On the ascent, I looked up and noticed I was going up way to fast, I could feel it on my lungs and in my head, I tried to release the air in my BC (vest) but couldn't find the right valve cause I wasn't really used to that gear. I have also had a pretty bad cold for the past week and ruptured my right ear drum 6 weeks ago in Idaho while Tubing. So, crappy situations to begin with. Then all of a sudden I got this really sharp pain in my ears and then they basically just exploded, and water started rushing in, I got vertigo and everything just started spinning, the only thing that I could see was a rope to my left, so I clung to it. I just started rolling with the surge and couldn't control anything that was happening to me. Luckily, the dive master saw me and came up to me and grabbed my arm, i pointed to my ears and gave him the no good sign. He took me by the hand and escorted me out of the next 50 feet we had of the cave, and out and around to the side where the boat was on. We had to decompress (wait 5 minutes at 5 meters to get all the bubbles out of your system, basically) before we could get up to the boat, man, that was a long five minutes. I clung to the rocks that were next to us, and just tried to endure the pain and try not to float away. Man, every time I would shift my head or anything, it felt like it would just keep going in that direction, like my brain was doing these flips inside my head or something, slow movements were best. I need to go to sleep though, if you read this before I finish, sorry, just come back later, but, I am alive now to write this and can hear about 30 percent of what goes on around me in my left ear that has a hole in the tympanic membrane. I am on antibiotics and should be healed in another 2 weeks.

AUSTRALIA

After our 16 hour plane ride, we have landed. The best part was, I slept for 13 hours of the flight! Whoa! Then, Kerri and I watched the movie Australia to get into the Outback Mode! And sure enough, the second we got off the plane, the immigration man sounded just like the main character on the movie! He was awesome! The only problem was, I could see my breath when we walked out of the airport . . . It’s WINTER HERE!

We have seen a couple of old friends, and have begun our ascent to the great north of this rather vast continent. (I have heard it is up in the 80’s in the north . . . perfect). This is one of the most exotic places in this world. It feels like I am on another planet, but then I see a glimpse of the places that I have been in my life, and realize that we are still on earth. But, I tell you what; these marsupials are definitely a different set of creatures entirely! We went kayaking and canoeing down a river in Kangaroo valley and got to see plenty of roos, wombats, and crazy birds. It was pretty awesome! Got a little wet, but that was definitely supposed to be expected. Then we went and saw Fitzroy Falls, a gigantic waterfall, which luckily wasn’t even close to the river we kayaked down! But, that was chilly. We ran back to our cars after seeing that one and then blasted the heat.
Today we have been on the road for quite some time; we have driven the equivalence of driving from our front door to Calgary. And when we finally get to where we are going, it will be like driving from our house to New York and then up to Canada and then back. We have stopped at a few awesome places:
Sydney Temple.
New Castle, a quaint little place where we had Italian Bistro for lunch and got Fresh Farmer’s Market Fruit for the road.
Surfer’s Paradise, and It was definitely a surfer’s paradise! Beautiful white sandy beach with majestic turquoise waves. V isited some more friends.
Australia Zoo, where Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter himself, made quite the name for himself. What a zoo! We got to see all of his favorite little Beauties and pet some kangaroos and koalas. What a place.

All in all, the trip has been quite eventful thus far, no worries, my journal holds all the funny little treasures, it’s got some good ones, you’ll have to sit down and go through it with me when we get back . . . Along with the pictures, of course. Enjoy the few I’ve got here.