libertus

Been in Western Australia for the last week at a major family do. Lots of fun and lots of alcohol so it’s been a fair test of stamina! The weather has been cool with the occasional day of rain, which is normal for us but a complete delight to the folks from the east who don’t see rain all that often.

Places visited so far; Perth (the capital), Margaret River (wine region) and Pemberton (for the family event). Next stop Fremantle maybe for diving.

Six months. Hard to believe really. We have done so many things and seen so many people yet Australia still has more to discover. However, I’m getting tired now and am looking forward to returning to the UK. That won’t happen for a few months yet as we’re doing another extended stopover in S.E. Asia. It’s the diving.

We fly out of Melbourne on the 4th March to Kuala Lumpur. From there it’s on to Sabah to dive again. From Sabah, who knows? We have to be back in Blighty by the end of June.

Anyone want to offer short-term accomodation to a couple of freeloading travellers this summer?

Still alive and still travelling southwards to attend the wedding festivities in Melbourne this weekend. We’ve stopped en-route in Canberra for some family visiting.

Today Liberta logged her 50^th dive!

We completed the classroom session of our Nitrox course on Monday but unfortunately ADI were still out of oxygen yesterday so we cannot complete the practical (i.e. breathing the actual stuff underwater) session until tomorrow. ADI gave us a couple of consolation dives using air off Cook Island (we saw a couple of sharks at the end of the second). Today we travelled to Byron Bay where we did a single dive at Julian Rocks which was interesting (dive leader lost the group, family of blue-spotted rays, large turtle).

Did anyone make resolutions? Broken any yet?!

A Merry Xmas to all those who care! We had a pretty good time diving on the reef and the Yongala although the nightly roller-coaster travelling on the boat was not conducive to restful sleep.

The camera we hired was… ummm… not so good. Couple that with my inexperience at underwater photography and the result is… not many pictures and few good ones. Here they are…

Yes… it’s me!	Examining some coral	Liberta

Greetings from Liberta	Greetings from Libertus

And, surprisingly, there are some fish that choose to make their home in the ocean!

ugly looking cod in yongala hold	a couple of spade fishes	nemo!

Sea star	Definately a Scottish fish… check the forehead!	Crown of Thorns starfish – a coral eater!

We’re back in Tweed Heads/Coolangatta for New Year. I’ve driven many miles over the last couple of days so I’m due for some rest and relaxation. Nimbin is only 60km from here so I’m popping over today to pick up some goodies for the celebration. Also booked for next week is a nitrox course with ADI – the shop where I learned to dive. Feels good to give a little back.

I mentioned that we’re diving the S.S. Yongala and the Great Barrier Reef over Christmas. We’ve also hired an underwater camera and flash. No promises nor guarantees, but I hope to be able to share a little of the excitement of diving with all my landlubber readers after the trip.

I am now trained to give first aid to mannequins!

Although I appreciate that simulating emergencies with real people is difficult and costly, surely it would be better to do that than to turn out thousands of people fully qualified to provide rescue breathing and CPR to plastic dummies?

Liberta has posted some great wildlife pictures.

The blog is still being comment-spammed by free online poker. Still under control for the time being but my last pruning pass deleted 79 spam comments. Who is responsible?

The Dive Shack on Magnetic Island skillfully sold us a couple of specialty diving courses; Wreck Diver and Stress/Rescue Diver. We successfully completed both and so are now well on our way to being highly certified non-professional scuba divers. Not that certification matters to me. I’m only interested in being a better, safer diver which the Stress/Rescue course achieved.

We are spending most of Christmas Day diving the S.S. Yongala wreck (widely described as Australia’s Best Dive) and the following two days diving the Great Barrier Reef again.

We’re staying for a few days on the island paradise of Magnetic Island, a short ferry ride off Townsville. The weather is remaining very hot but just within tolerance.

Most notable thing about the island are the flies. There are mutant mosquito-like flies here that are about 5 times normal size and doubly interested in sucking our blood. We’ve been told that every person has to kill at least 20 of these buggers every day. That’s a war!

We’ve also done a couple of shore dives in Alma Bay. Most enjoyable – unchallenging and relaxing so an opportunity to put some of our new skills to the test. Liberta seems to have a talent for spotting things; she pointed out three bright white (but small) nudibranchs on the last dive. She also admirably navigated underwater although we did cheat and pop up to the surface for cross-checking. No cheating next time!!

My vote goes to the Holiday Inn, Townsville, Queensland. Can’t tell which building it is from the official photograph? It’s the cylindrical one with the cigarette butt sticking out the top. And, believe me, it looks much worse in real-life. For a start, it’s murky brown edged with murky green. Secondly, it is totally out of character with the rest of the town.

Another picture
Another picture

Hmmm… I can’t seem to find all that many pictures. Perhaps I’ll have to take a few and upload them.