A bittersweet farewell...

Well, the inevitable finally happened. I'm writing this post from a hostel in Bondi Beach... a three hour flight from my beloved Cairns. It's the end of an era, folks. 

When I first moved to Australia, I planned on going to spend a bit of time in Cairns, check out the Great Barrier Reef and scoot on down the east coast over the course of three or four months. I told everyone that I'd be home in February (that's February 2013). What really happened went more this this: 

-Move to Cairns

-Realize Australia is freaking expensive and if I need to stay for more than three weeks, I need a job

-Got a job on Reef Experience

And it all went downhill from there. The crew I met on Rexy were/are amazing. I met so many incredible people who are now some of my best friends/family. Even when I stopped working there, I still found myself at the Pier Bar at least two or three nights a week hanging out with all the blue shirted Rex crew. I've seen a lot of people come and go from that boat, and from the other boats in Cairns. I've met some of the most amazing people from all over the world and I'll remember them forever and ever. I love Cairns and the dive life there... I love knowing that if I show up at the Pier Bar any day of the week around 5 or 6 when the boat crews get off, I'll find a couple people I know, if not a million. Now, maybe that makes us alcoholics, but where else can you find something like that? 

I can't wrap my head around that my time in Cairns is over. The people I lived with and worked with and met along the way have just been incredible and I love you all to bits. I've been lucky enough to have the best work mates and house mates ever... even if my work mates throw me in the marina or dye my hair blue and my house mates turn all my bedroom furniture upside down. Haha. I've had some great adventure days... It's hard when you have to decide in the morning which waterfall you want to go on any given day. I'll miss so many things about Cairns, but it's the people I'll miss the most. My heart aches because I know it will be a long while until I make it back, but I know I'll bump into everyone along the way. Thank God the diving world is so small :)  

My last week in Queensland was brilliant. Mike and I roadtripped down to Townsville to (finally) dive the Yongala, a passenger ship that sank in a cyclone in 1911. They call it Australia's Titanic... it was a fancy pants ship and all the passengers died at sea. Since it's been down there for more than 100 years it is COVERED with creatures. I've never seen so many fish in one place in my life. Not to mention the sharks, sea snakes and giant Queensland gropers. Beautiful dives... I took lots of video with the GoPro, so stay tuned for an youtube masterpiece.

Me and Mike hanging out on the Townsville Strand

We hung out in Townsville for basically three days. But got to stay with my friend Heather again. We met long long ago in the Turks and Caicos and we managed to hang out in Australia! Like I said, the diving/marine bio world is very small, so I know I'll bump into all these amazing friends somewhere else crazy in the world. Madagascar or Bali or South Africa or maybe even Florida ;) We also checked out the aquarium in Townsville (where I have been before, but Mike hadn't so I gave him the grand tour).

I may have had too much fun at the aquarium....

On my second to last day in Cairns, I went out on Mike's boat, the Falla, an old wooden sailboat where he works as an instructor. It was an absolutely idyllic day. Really doesn't get any better than that. AND I saw an octopus. :) 

So the Cairns leg of my adventure might be over, but I'm on to new and exciting things, I hope! Sydney for the next few days, then off to Thailand. Flying into Phuket on Tuesday and bopping around for a couple weeks until Mike meets me out there! I'm really sad to leave Cairns, it's been such a good home to me for the past year, but I'm also excited about the new adventures to come. To my Cairns family, I love you to pieces and I can't wait to see you on another journey. Thanks for an amazing year guys. 

Love and fishes. 

Adventures and the end of another job

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!!

Future travel plans!!!

Hi friends!

I've got lots of exciting news to share. Drumroll please....




I've made travel plans!



I'm going to Thailand! Wooooo! So, on November 2nd, I will cry my eyes out and leave Cairns to spend three days bopping around Sydney. From there, its off to Phuket, Thailand!

 I am going to be so so sad to leave Cairns, even thinking about it now is hard (especially because I'm officially one month away from leaving). I've got such an awesome little famliy here. I was at the pub last night, talking to one of my friends who's also leaving around the same time as me. We were talking for maybe 5 minutes, inside the bar, away from our normal outside table and no less than five people came by and jumped on one (or both) of us. THATS why I'll be sad. The diving community here is so tight and everyone knows everyone else. It's amazing. I can walk to the pub near the marina on any night of the week and I'll find friends. And I realize that makes us sound like alcoholics, but its just where we meet. The good news is that the diving community in the world is just as small and tight and I know I'll be seeing these people again somewhere in the world. Some of them are already talking about coming to Thailand sometime in the future.

As far as my Thailand plans are concerned, I'm not entirely sure what Phuket has in store. I know there's amazing diving, and beautiful beaches and rainforests, so I'm sure I'll figure it out! There's Bhuddist temples, authentic Thai food and elephants. I feel like I can't go wrong! I'm going to be there for three weeks and then Mike (the awesome English guy in my life) is coming to meet me and we'll figure it out from there. He's an instructor as well, so hopefully we can find some work underwater. I'll keep you all in the loop ;)

In other news, I went sailing yesterday! Mike works on an old sailboat that leads dive/snorkel trips out to the reef, and I went yesterday as a volunteer/hostie/just wanted to go out on a sailboat. But its a  wooden ship that was built in the 50's and used to be used as a pearl diving boat back in the day. It was a really beautiful day. Even got to hoist some sails and drive the boat for a bit!

Other than that, not much news to share! But I'll keep you posted about Thailand and other future adventures!!

My first open water course! And fun dives!

Hey friends!
I'm finally getting into the swing of my new job! The first few weeks it was new and exciting. The subsequent weeks were really stressful and frustrating. There is SO MUCH to learn on this boat. I do everything from teach diving to pump the sewage. Most of it is more complicated than any other boat I've worked on, and usually involves a lot more heavy lifting and muscles than I'm used to using. It's definitely a boat designed for guys and I struggled for a few weeks trying to fit in and not get my ass handed to me by everything.

But the last two trips I've done, I really felt better about everything. It's getting easier, everything is making a lot more sense and I'm even getting stronger. The last two trips I've really found my groove!

I got off of the boat yesterday, and that trip was the best one I've had yet. I had my first Open Water course! That's your beginning dive course, for those not up on the PADI lingo. I had four students in the pool and out on the boat. Luckily I wasn't thrown into the classroom teaching yet, I'm much more confident teaching in the water than out of it! One of my students was quite the handful. She was from California and around my parents's age (so 39, right Mom?). But holy cow, she could talk. We would be doing a briefing about how to use a compass and she'd be asking about whalesharks! I'd be explaining our skills for the next dive and she'd butt in, asking if I thought she was properly weighted! The whole course was an exercise in herding cats. But it was mostly one cat in particular... In the end the whole group did very well, all of them got certified and three out of the four went on to do the Adventure course (a night dive, a deep dive and a photography dive).

I usually don't get a chance to take photos, since most of the dives I'm teaching (read: herding cats). BUT I've discovered a clever loophole. One of the dives in the Advanced course and the Adventure course is a photography dive, so if my students want me to guide them, I bring along my camera as well! Its a teaching tool, I swear. :)

This is a cheeky little moon wrasse that wanted to be best friends. 

This guy is called Wally and he like chasing divers, long walks on the beach and putting his lips in your outstretched hand and dragging you around in the water. He's about 4ft/1.5m long! 

Cute little Hawksbill turtle! 

Nemo! 

On day three of the trip, crew wake up time is 5:30. It's rough, but when you're looking at this as you're setting up the back deck, it's not so bad...

Now, you might think that working as a dive instructor now, doing 8+ dives a week, I would be sick and tired of being underwater. NOT TRUE. Last week, during my days off the weather was amazing, so I booked a fun day on a dive boat! Me and Mike went out on Quicksilver, a boat out of Port Douglas, which is about an hour north of Cairns. Neither of us had been to the reefs that far north, so it was a good adventure. Since I booked on through my new job (awesome staff rates!) we were on standby, so we didn't know what we could get up to until we got there. As luck would have it, there were two spaces in the dive group so we got to go fo free! The funny part was that we had to do a guided dive with a divemaster! I'm an instructor, Mike's a divemaster (doing his instructor course this week) and we had to follow around a little group. It was nice in the end, though. We stuck to the back of the group and ignored the problems the other divers were having! It was my day off! I didn't have to deal with anyone's mask issues! And I didn't have to navigate, because we were following around a group! Too easy. 

Underwater selfies! 

A true Nemo! 

Open wide! Flowery cod showing off his chompers! 

That's about all that's new and exciting at the moment! Stay tuned though... hopefully I'll be making post-Australia travel plans in the next few weeks and let you know what's next in my globetrotting life! 

Love and fishes! 

Dive Instructoring and Silly Yellow Scooters

Hi friends!

Well, I'm officially working at a dive instructor! I know I said I'd post after the first week... but time flies and all of a sudden I was on a boat again!

So I'm working on a liveaboard dive boat that goes out on three day two night trips. On these trips, we've usually got one or two open water courses, which is your first dive certification. We also have advanced courses (which I taught both weeks so far) and we also have certified divers and snorkelers as well! The boat holds 32 passengers, which is a nice change from the 100 or so my last boat held.

So both weeks I taught the Advanced diver course and both weeks I also only had one student! Pretty easy for the first couple weeks of teaching! It went really well the first week and even better the second week! The advanced course consists of five dives: navigation, night, deep dive (to 100ft/30m), peak performance buoyancy and either photography or naturalist... depending on the students interest. Its a fun course to teach because the course is designed to hone skills (like navigation and buoyancy) and also introduce divers to different areas of diving (like night and deep). The skills are pretty minimal, its mostly just about becoming a better more experienced diver! It's way fun!

In addition to those five dives, I also do guided dives for the certified divers as well... leading them around the reef and showing them all the pretty things. The first week my guided dive was a little rough, since I had never dived the site... I was really the one that needed guiding! But it was still good... now that I've been out for two weeks I have a much better handle on the sites... like where Nemo lives and where the turtles like the sleep.

The sites we go to are really really beautiful... completely different places to where my old boat used to go! One reef we go to has a resident Maori Wrasse... they get about 6 feet long at full size. But most of them are really curious friendly fish. Our wrasse is called Wally... and he's SUPER curious. He hangs out under the boat and investigates the divers that are doing their safety stops underneath the boat. If you cup your hand and hold it out to him, kind of doing the queen wave, if you will, Wally will come over, put his big mouth in your hand and drag you around under the boat. It's amazing. One of the divers took a picture with me and Wally, so hopefully she emails that along soon and you can see what I mean :)

We also saw whales last week! I was cleaning the back deck, getting ready to pack the boat down (it was the last dive of the trip) and all of a sudden about 4 or 5 humpbacks surface just on the other side of the reef, a couple hundred yards away. Makes cleaning a boat a lot more pleasant when you've got company like that!

Even though I'm only gone for three days, it certainly takes a lot out of you. Last week, when I got off the boat, I barely made it out for post-trip drinks and crashed pretty hard the next day, sleeping until about noon. This week, I was planning on doing much of the same. Came home from post-trip drinks, crashed and was woken up by a text at about 9am asking if I was going to the waterfalls... Now... the waterfalls here are pretty hard to resist. I went and rounded up the housemates to figure out the plan. We had a problem... 8 people and only a 4-seater car. Hmmm... luckily, one of my housemates came up with a brilliant plan. Rent scooters. Silly, yellow, scooters. It was awesome. We rode them about 70km to Josephine Falls (which took about 2 hours... an hour longer than anyone wants to be on one of those things, by the way) but it was awesome. Josephine is amazing... there's big cliffs over deep water perfect for jumping, an amazingly scenic waterfall and a natural rock slide that you can slide down on your bum. Awesome. We hung out there for a few hours before turning tail and trying REALLY hard to get our scooters back by 5pm. We didn't make it, so we had the beautiful yellow things for the night! Made going to my work meeting that night way more exciting. Haha!

Things are going great in Cairns, I'm really liking my new job. Its a lot of work... a lot of physical work... I'm going to have some pretty good muscles after a few more weeks, but its good! Lots of diving, a good crew and I get to teach! Pretty exciting!!! Sending lots of love to all my friends and family back in the states.... come out to Cairns, I'll teach you to dive ;)

Love and fishes!!!

Gainfully employed... again!! :)

A thousand apologies for being the worst blog-writer ever and completely neglecting the last month.

I've been back in Cairns, safe and sound for about a month now, frantically looking for work as a brand-new dive instructor. I had a couple of trials and interviews, but none of them worked out. Everyone kept saying that the tourism would pick up and boats would start hiring any day now, but that day never seemed to happen. I have a handful of other instructor friends looking for work as well, so I was starting to worry about finding work as an instructor and getting ready to polish up my hospitality resume and start looking for bar jobs...

Until...

I applied for a job at the biggest PADI school in Cairns. They just certified their 130,000 PADI diver, so they're a huuuuuge company. I figured that since I was a brand spankin' new instructor, it would be a shot in the dark, but as luck would have it, they wanted to interview me! At the interview, I found out that in order to be considered for a job, I would have to go on a five day trial with the company, following two days of training in the pool and classroom and three days of training on the boat. It was a very busy 5 days, but it was a lot of fun. I got to work with really fun people and learned so much about teaching diving in real life. I basically followed around the senior instructor and watched him teach a full Open Water Scuba class, which is your first scuba certification. The boats go out for three days at a time to some really incredible sites, so it was some full-on training. Dawn to dusk every day kind of thing, but I loved every minute of it.

Apparently they seemed to like me as well, because they offered me a job! I start next week!!! I can't wait to tell you all about it... I'm sure my first week will be a bit of a mess, because there's a ton of information to remember, but I think it will be an amazing experience. I'm really pumped about it. So look for another post in a week and a half or so, hopefully talking about how awesome my first teaching experience was! Wish me luck!

Love and fishes!!!!!!!

Adventures in.... Perth!

More travels!

So after my instructor course wrapped up, we spent the last week in Exmouth just playing around and having a damn good time. One of the last things we did, was go on a dive under the Navy Pier in Exmouth. It's been called one of the best dives in the world, and for good reason! There were THOUSANDS of jacks and snapper under the pier. It's been in the navy's hands for a long long time, so there's no fishing anywhere near it, and the fish certainly seem to know. There were some HUGE grouper and a handful of sharks as well. Now, I really wish I could show you pictures of all the awesome things that I saw, the huge schools of fish, the toadfish, and alllllllll the lionfish, BUT unfortunately my camera has met its untimely death. As soon as I jumped into the water at the pier, it filled with water. Now, the outside of the camera may be waterproof, but all the electronics most certainly are not. It was still an amazing dive. 

After that, I flew back down the west coast to Perth... allegedly the most remote capital city in the world. I stayed with Luke, one of my friends from my instructor course, and he gave me the tour-de-Perth! Its a really nice city, but it was cold the whole time I was there... damn the Southern hemisphere and its backwards seasons. July is supposed to be hot!! Haha. But Perth was great, even went on a very very cold dive under a jetty. Despite the very very cold water (57F or 14C brrrrrr) it was a really awesome dive. I saw seahorses for the first time, which was rather exciting! And an octopus!

Other fun in Perth, went to the aquarium (of course... haha). Went on a very creepy tour of the Freemantle Prison. Think Alcatraz, but without the island. But it was at night, with teeny tiny flashlights, making for an extraordinarily jumpy time... but still fun! Awesome week overall, many thanks to Luke and his family for putting me up for the week... AND teaching me cricket!!

After that, I headed back to Cairns, and to the warmth! I've been back for a couple days now and its been great! On the job hunt AGAIN, so wish me luck!