We have enjoyed a wonderful 5 weeks on the Eastern coastline of Australia seeing all we could of the beaches, wildlife and meeting as many fabulous Assies as possible. After 4 weeks of driving from Melbourne to Cairns we were lucky enough to score a 7 day livaboard dive trip up the Great Barrier Reef to Osprey Reef and then the rarely visited Bougainville Reef due some spectacluar weather conditions even the crew was surprised by. They had a rare half price special going on so Craig and I jumped on it the moment we could. As the highlight of our trip we got to add 25 (for me) and 26 (Craig) dives to our experience in some of the most beautiful diving spots in the world also getting our Advanced Open Water certification.
We were graced with the company of a rarely seen whale shark one afternoon who let us snorkle with him for over and hr and then joined us on our ascent from our afternoon dive again. Absolutely incredible! Among our dives was a shark feeding where about 20 or more grey reef, white tip and silver tip sharks along with some giant cod devoured the fish provided by the staff just meters in front of us. Craig was able to snag a tooth from one of the sharks that had broken off on the cage, after the feeding of course. They are magnificant and quite lovely creatures with a bad reputation and though I knew they wouldn't harm me I still kept my distance through all the dives. Giant Cod were fed right in front of our faces at Cod Hole, literally slapping us in the face with their tails as they whipped by. We saw fantastic marine life from eagle rays to lion fish, morays and even nemo and his family a few times. Over all we were treated like royalty by a phenominal crew, ate more than we should have of the abundant food and met some wonderful people from all over. I miss the rocking of the boat already and still hear the anticipated "dive time!" call in the back of my mind every now and then. We have some spectacular pictures to share as soon as we get to Asia where the internet is faster and by far cheeper, or so we hear.
We had heard that the Aussies are even nicer than the New Zealanders which was hard to believe after many lovely encounters with kind people in NZ, but i must say the competition was on. The people here were so nice to us, some of whom i know we'll remain friends with for a long long time. Thanks to all of you, you know who you are. Even one Brit who was the dive trip director living here shared his kind heart and Aussie hospitality and even took us to the airport in Cairns.
Our last few nights in the country were spend back in our tent on the Great Ocean Road back down in Victoria where we were able to see a cuddly koala very close up in the wild which made my day, and of course the regular sworm of wallaby and kangaroos. The Twelve Apostels was spectactular though over popluated with tourists which is to be expected. The drive was well worth our time with breath taking ocean views and if the water wasn't freezing coming up from the Antartic we would have enjoyed a swim or two.
So we say good bye to the land down under and in just a few hrs board a plane to Singapore where we'll spend only a day or two, then fly down to the southern Indonesian islands for some down time and maybe even a dive or two more. We need a little rest and recupe from the vacation from being on the go for the last 2 months. We are still loving every moment of the journey and learned loads along the way.
More updates to come and apologies for the speradic updates.
We love you all so much and hope you had a fantastic holiday season.
