Hello all!!
So I've been rather busy this last month, running around finishing working and such. So we'll back up a little bit.
For whatever reason, nearly everyone in my house is leaving in October or November. It's getting pretty empty around here. We went from a house with 12 people (we're legally only supposed to have 8 haha) down to 5. It's rather sad! Everyone's off traveling or headed back home, but I'm meeting up with a couple of them in Thailand, so it's all good. Anyway, Emma, one of my housemates from Sweden, has been volunteering on Falla, the wooden sailboat that Mike works on that I volunteered with a couple of times. She's been a volunteer hostie for quite some time now, so when she was getting ready to leave, she decided to have her leaving party on the boat! AND she wanted her leaving party to be pirate themed! So we took Falla out on a nighttime pirate booze cruise. Everyone dressed up, drank rum and had fake sword fights. I'm currently fighting with my terrible internet so I can't post pictures :( But it was way too much fun.
I've been working quite a bit lately, doing more open water courses, which is great experience and a lot of fun. My students have been really great and I've gotten to do some great dives, but more on that later. Last weekend, after my trip, we were making plans for an adventure day, but we couldn't sort out what we wanted to do. Eventually me, Mike, Kiri and Shane hopped in Kiri's car and drove north. Kiri's been in Cairns for over a year and she's never been further north than Port Douglass, which is about an hour out of Cairns. We drove, and stopped wherever seemed good! A couple of beaches and a zoo! We were driving by and saw the sign for the Daintree Wild Zoo and decided, what the hell, lets go play with some animals. It was an awesome day. We got to feed wallabies and goats. And scratch a dingo behind the ears. Again, I wish my internet wasn't being such a little shit or I'd show you the silly pictures.
Now, this week was my last trip out with ProDive and my last open water course with them. I had four students from Germany and Denmark. They were great! Great divers from the start, quite at home in the water so it was an absolute pleasure to teach their course. Now, since it was my last trip, we tried to cram in as many fun dives as possible, so Day 2, when I normally do 3 dives, I did 5. We all got up at 5am to do a sunrise dive on a site called Three Sisters that we never ever go to, because its owned by another company and their boat is usually sitting on it. The other boat was still sitting on it, but we swam over from our boat. Beautiful dive. Loads of fish circling three massive coral pinnacles (the three "sisters). Saw four or five whitetip reef sharks and lots of nudibranchs and flatworms. Next, after my two training dives, me and Paddy, another instructor, jumped in for another fun dive on Clownfish Bommie. It's a big coral pinnacle in the middle of nowhere that we're really not supposed to dive because it's so exposed to currents, but everyone does anyway... you just have to time the current right. It was perfectly calm so we jumped in no problem. It's called Clownfish Bommie because on top of this bommie are about 4 different species of clownfish and there are probably 50 individuals. 50 of Nemo's cousins! We were circling the bommie and find the most massive grouper I've ever seen. He could have easily swallowed me and Paddy whole. He didn't hang around for long, but it was still awesome to see. On the way back to the boat, we found Wally! Our local Maori wrasse, a big friendly beautiful green fish about my size. We played around with Wally for a while... he'll come over to your outstretched hand and put his big lips in your hand and push you around the reef. He's AWESOME.
Now, in addition to my awesome dives, I had some not so awesome pranks pulled on me. Firstly, on my first ocean dive with my students, Mark and Paddy filled up my dive booties with blue food dye. I still have blue toenails. I got pushed in the water at nearly every opportunity, leaving all my clothes soaked. On day two, I was tackled and tied up like a hostage. Hands and feet bound, pillowcase over the head and tossed into our inflatable rescue tender. I got driven over to another ProDive boat and left on the back deck. Luckily they didn't drive off too far, but everyone on the other boat had quite a laugh. Today was going very peacefully until we were cleaning up the dive deck during the last dive. All of a sudden Mark, Paddy and Taryn, all the other instructors came out with flour and eggs. Needless to say it got rather messy, because obviously I wasn't going to take that laying down. Flour and eggs EVERYWHERE. Then came the leftover food dye which has now turned parts of my hair a lovely shade of blue. It's pretty funny actually. Hopefully it'll wash out in a few days time.
All in all, I had a great time working for ProDive. It was an awesome experience and I learned so much and met some pretty cool people... even though they dye my hair blue.
Over the next two days, Mike and I are driving down to Townsville (about 4 hours south) and diving a world famous shipwreck called the Yongala. It sank in a fire over 100 years ago and lays in about 100ft/30m of water. It's known for it's massive massive creatures. Big grouper, rays, sharks, you name it. I'm hoping to see lots of new things :) After that, I have a few days to play around with before I'm off to Sydney. Having a big Halloween party at the house before I go. I'll try to update again about Townsville and the Yongala before I go to Sydney.
Love and fishes!!
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