I've been back for almost a week now, but need to tie up a few loose ends and write a bit about the last few days that I had in California before coming home. My parents flew over from the UK to see me and their friends, the Haycocks, near San Francisco, and we immediatley drove out to Yosemite National Park for 3 days. The weather was pretty bad, lots of rain and low cloud, but the scenery was perhaps even more dramatic, and it was great to see El Capitan and Half Dome, formations I'd seen loads of photos and [View Full Entry]

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Just a week until I'm back in the good old UK, snow and all. Going to be a big change, but can't wait. First of all though I still have a week here in California with my folks, a pretty good way to end almost five months away from home. But before all that, I'll backtrack to my last few days in Oz first. So last time I updated this I was in Bright, having just done a couple of days walking in the mountains. I had every intention of relaxing for a day at least, maybe getting on a bike [View Full Entry]

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Only about 2 weeks to go folks and then I'm back in the UK, hope the weather is OK, I have been wearing shorts and t-shirts for most of 5 months and have no intention of doing otherwise back home! Fat chance hey! I've spent the last week travelling through Victoria, from the Great Ocean Road in the west through to Bright, where I am now, in the north east. I had a great couple of days on the coast, and the drive was pretty spectacular. Shame I didn't have a better car to really enjoy it but the scenery was [View Full Entry]

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This time last week I was diving off the coast of Western Australia, I'm now thousands of miles away in South Australia and heading to Melbourne soon. After the diving I had to spend a day relaxing, as you're not allowed to fly for 24 hours after doing multiple dives. I didn't think there was much to do around Exmouth, but I was proved wrong. I hired a car, a little Hyundai Getz, terrible car, and drove around the headland and into the national park. There were some tremendous beaches and at the end of the road (only passable in a [View Full Entry]

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I've spent the last 2 days diving off the coast near Exmouth (scene of the recent Qantas drama), so here are some photos (not all mine) from the 5 dives I've done. Yesterday we dived off a place called Navy Pier, inside a US base here that's used to communicate with subs in the region using VLF. Little coral but the most amazing fish life I have ever seen, including 2 types of shark and huge shoals of trevally. Today we dived on Ningaloo Reef, where there was much more smaller life (fish and coral), but also a huge Manta Ray! [View Full Entry]

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I've spent the last few days in and around Perth, and for the first time since New Zealand the weather has felt distinctly British. Windy, a bit of rain, and generally pretty chilly! Can't really complain too much and I've just flown about 750 miles north up the coast to Exmouth (to go diving) and it's over 30 degrees again! I'm nearly back on the same latitude as we were when we were on the other coast around Cairns about a week ago. If you've seen the photos I put up you'll have seen how great our diving trip on the [View Full Entry]

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These photos are from a few dives we did a few days ago from Cairns, not many big fish but pretty amazing all the same, especially the reef of course! [View Full Entry]

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I can't believe it - it's raining! We're in Cairns, as far north as we are planning to go, and we've stepped out into a small tropical shower. Fingers crossed it'll be better for our dive tomorrow. We've been on Magnetic Island, about 350km south of here for a few days, and although the sun has shone and we're now looking pretty brown, it was pretty windy so we couldn't dive there. Real shame as we'd been told to dive a great wreck about 100m long that went down in 1911 a couple of hours off the coast. It's called the [View Full Entry]

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We've been in Australia for well over a week now, and we're really enjoying it here, especially as the weather is so good, and it's only early Spring! Today it's been mid-20s again, clear blue sky, a bit of wind but we are on the coast after all. Doesn't make sunbathing particularly pleasant though with all the sand swirling around. So we're on the beach/coast at Byron Bay, not far from Brisbane, after a long drive up from Sydney. We had a great time there, especially the couple of days on Bondi Beach. The hotel we stayed in was awesome - [View Full Entry]

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We're in Australia now, real shame to leave NZ which we loved, but it's already warmer here and can't wait to head up the coast and enjoy the sunshine. We only had a few days on NZ's North Island but it was good fun, and a real change from the constant travelling we'd had before in the South. We arrived in Wellington off the ferry from Picton, and instantly realised we weren't going to be too sad to see the back of the campervan. We had to drive at least 15km out of the city to find a camping ground and [View Full Entry]

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