Wish I had heaps of funny bone tickling stories to tell - but haven't really had any even midly interesting events happen to me lately... maybe I am losing my touch?

Spent a few good days at Magnetic Island out of Townsville, just doing great walks around the Island and trying to find some sunshine. My next stop was Airlie beach - backpacker party paradise and gateway to sailing the Whitsunday islands in the Great Barrier Reef.

The locals reckon the weather is the worst in 30 years... it's about the same as a Vancouver summer - sun, then overcast, sun again and wind. It's still pretty warm up here - hard to believe they are "toughing it out" in a winter with plus 20 degree days and cloud cover.

I did manage to get on one of the racing maxi sail boats for a few days sail through the islands. Boy can they go! Heaps of fun to watch us land lubbers attempt to move on the boat with a 40 degree angle and the wind in our sails. The snorkeling is good - there is noticeable coral damage from both the climate and people, which is a real shame. One of the groups on board was a band traveling through Australia, so we got a free concert the first night - and the second everyone was so gooned, they couldn't play at all - so we all made do with the sailing crew's drinking games (a looong night).

I am off on an overnight bus to the Town of 1770 (guess when it was founded?) which I have been hearing about - hopefully some e-mail worthy escapades are in the offing...

Hello Tropics!

After the dive trip, I wandered back up to Cairns to meet up with people in Cairns - my buddy Jon, who's been motoring around the world on a disgustingly expensive yacht for the last year, and in Cairns for 'shore leave' and Krystle, a girl from N.Vancouver I met over the internet who supposed to be traveling the East Coast at the same time I am.

Jon and I had shared a one too many beers bar-touring Cairns before the dive trip- Cairns is like backpacker Vegas. I have no pictures... for good reason. It's dangerous to go bar hopping in this town with photographic evidence. Krystle, another travel mate and I are doing the same rounds... I have got to get my butt out of this town!

When I met up with Krystle, I promptly re-arranged her travel itinerary so she could get around to Uluru when the heat was still bareable - which meant I also talked myself out of a traveling partner for the East Coast. *sigh* Instead, we headed up on a trip up to the far North of Queensland to check out the rainforest at Cape Tribulation.

After cold nights and starry skies in the Outback, in Northern Queensland its been warm, but rainy, windy and overcast, and right now I look like I have chicken pox, I have so many bites from some kind of evil Rainfoest no-see-um. The rainforest here is very primitive - apparently it's the oldest rainforest in the world. There are enormous palms, giants strangler vines, mangroves, melaleuca, and just green, green and more green - it's such a startling contrast from the rest of the country. I had forgotten how nice it is to have water in the air - moisture on my skin. After the aridness of the desert - this is heaven for my webbed feet :-)

Australia spends so much money on tourism advertising, it's no wonder they neglect to mention how many things in this country can kill you. 6 of the world's 10 most venemous snakes, nasty spiders, scorpion fish, stone fish, sharks, crocodiles and yes - a tree. No! you cry - yes I say - and it's not just to scare tourists. Up here they have some god-awful tree called a stinger tree that, when touched, injects silica-like hairs onto your skin, which react with water - and leads to an agnonizing death. I could have lived without this knowledge.

Off to Mission Beach now for a little R&R and liver recovery - whew!

Outback shots

A little taste of the outback for you - the Dog proof fence in the Northern Territory, and the most famous rock in Oz... Uluru. (It really is that colour)

Holy mother - that's a big fish!

So, the last time we heard from our intrepid traveller, she was standing in
the flat forever-land in the centre of the Australian outback....

...and hadn't gotten enough of it yet. I think I found the only coach that
does a three-day dirt-road trip between Alice Springs (in the Centre) and
Cairns, at the top of the East Coast instead of flying. It was fantastic! If
I thought I had seen the outback already - I was mistaken. We didn't see a
sealed road until the afteroon of the last day. We would drive for over
250km without seeing a single homestead. Our toilets were bushes (Ladies
right and gents left - if we found a place that had enough bush to actually
hide behind). If I thought Coober Pedy was barren, we stopped at one section
just past the Queensland border where it was just dirt and dust for as far
as the eye can see - it's truly spectacular.

The first night, we stayed at a cattle station (read: Ranch for us
N.American types) which - no funning - was roughly the size of Belgium.
Dinner was stew cooked in a massive cast-iron pot over the fire, with two
pet (rescued) kangaroos hanging out near the flames for heat, an entire
litter of puppies, and some ducks. Nothing like watching a woman trying to
bottle feet a 3 foot red kangaroo... it's hilarious.

After a overnight in Cairns, I scooted down the coast to Townsville to join
a friend from work, and a pack of his buddies for a 3-day live-aboard dive
trip of the Great Barrier Reef. My work mate is a PADI dive instructor, so
for my last month in Sydney, we were diving every weekend in Sydney Haqrbour
to get me qualified for this trip. Boy am I glad I did!

The trip's highlight was a 30m dive on the final day down to the wreck of
the Yongala, considered the best dive in Australia and one of the best in
the world. (oh, and we dove the Barrier reef too...). The weather was
kicking it up something mighty - we steamed all night out to the reef. Being
such an exposed site, the Yongala wreck cannot be accessed in bad weather,
and the forecast wasn't getting any better. So, our captain moved up the
Yongala dive to the first dive we did (which is a good thing too - the dive
after of us was canceled for bad weather). AHHH! The fifth and sixth dive of
my entire life is getting into the water in 3m swell, with 1/2 the crew and
90% of the divers getting seasick over the side, and a wreck dive - and I
haven't been below 8m.

Thank heavens once we got under the waves - it was calm, no current at all -
and beautiful. It was almost a shame to dive the Yongala first, because even
the Great Barrier paled in comparison. We saw giant rays, Queensland
groupers about the size and girth of your average hockey bag, white-tip
sharks, heaps of fish and spectacular corals. Huge cod, sea snakes... I
mean everything on this dive was like regular marine life on steriods. It's
hard to believe how massive and abundant the fish were.

Once we got over the seas sickness, we dived a few of the other fantastic
reefs in the Great Barrier, including an unintention drift dive (uh...
current? there isn't supposed to be a current here..) and an eerie and
wonderful night dive. It's a whole different world down there when the
lights go out, and you can see the glow sticks and flashing beams of the
other divers in the water, the phosphoresence as you swim, and the moonlight
reflecting under the water. Talk about a highlight!

Bloody hell - I think I have discovered a new and expensive sport to fall in
love with :-)

Arrived in the Outback... and it's a long way out here!

Just 5 days in the outback so far, and you can often feel like you are on
the edge of the earth.

Coming North from Adelaide (not much to tell - it's a 'pretty' city, and
that's about it!) we wound our way through the Barossa and the Clare Valleys
(few little tastings - beautiful!) and on to the Flinders Ranges. Once you
pass those, it pretty much goes to scrub, spinifex (tussock grass) and
ghostly, spindly trees with dusty green leaves.

The Outback is flat, flat - oh wait - a rock! and then more flat. The rocks
look like they have been burnt by the sun, and even as we slide into winter,
you can get an idea of just how baking the sun is. Nothing describes it
better than the extra-terrestrial landscape of the opal mines in the town of
Coober Pedy. Early miners burrowed their houses right into the rocks and
hills of terrain that must have been the inspiration for Luke Skywalker's
home on Tatooine in Star Wars. Coober Pedy is a erie town - a place where
outlaws go to hide, an almost total cash economy. It's very spooky, and
there is barely even scrub brush to cover the rocky, sandy desert. It's hard
to believe anything can survive out there. We stayed in an underground
backpackers, which was quite a treat - the underground houses never get
hotter that 23 or so degrees, unlike the plus-40 temperatures top side.

We spent the next 3 days in Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and
Kings Canyon - sleeping out by the fire in our swags and sleeping bags... up
before dawn to catch every sunrise. The stars are incredible out here - no
light polution at all. You can see the different bands of the milky way and
even the pock-marked face of the moon. It isn't that warm up here right now,
and temperatures at night are close to 4 or 5 degrees.

Uluru is as majestic as you've heard, and this massive rock rising out of
the flat, backed earth all around it is truely awe-inspiring. Kata Tjuta
('Many Heads' - 36 rock heads in all) were both formed by the same
geological processes. We caught a couple of incredible sun rises and sunsets
on Uluru - you can actually see the rock change colours even from one minute
to the next, like God painting and then changing his mind about the tints.

The red dust of the Centre gets bloody everywhere, you are pretty much
eating it. The dryness and the incredible colours of the sand and rocks are
exactly like you see in photographs, it's hard to believe. We aren't really
in the 'real' outback - still on sealed roads mostly, and there are still
service stations and rest stops every hundred or so kilometres. In a couple
days I will be hopping another bus from Alice Springs to Cairns: dirt roads,
baked bitumen and water that tastes like a children's swimming pool.... Hey!
Good stuff.

hope you are all well!
I'm not really updating the blog right now - it's hard to get internet
access for the next little bit, so expect a gushing e-mail fter my wreck
dive trip in the Barier Reef!

Tara