Global Warming ehhhhhh???

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Right, since the last blog, we've headed west, through the outback. Well and truly equipped for beach weather, we spent about 2 weeks freezing our nuts off. Al Gore needs to take a quick trip out this way. its supposed to be roasting but we spent 2 of the coldest weeks in history in the outback oh well.

Before we left Cairns, we did our Padi. Great trip. Nothing quite like it. on our first solo dive, we were swimming around this huge coral mountain, only to see this dark grey shape about 20 meters away swimming our way. an 8ft reef shart swam 1 meter away from us, cool feeling. over the next few days we saw all kinds of coral, fish and turtles, not to mention a few more sharks. The night dive was my favourite. One of the boat crew spent about 10 minutes throwing a snorkel out with a piece of rope and retrieving it quickly. you should have seen all the sharks chasing the thing. we were yet to take the plunge, needless to say, there were a few jitters. jumped in anyway and spent the next half hour in total darkeness. all you could see is what your torch shone on. weird feeling. anyway, what could go wrong went wrong. aoilo and aine were told stay on the bottom with 2 other guys. the rest of us followed the instructor (he was fairly new at it), anyway, he thought all of us were with them. when we got back to the boat the lads surfaced right by us,as they were running out of air. oooops. Mossy, one of the guys travelling with us, got cramp and started floating to the surface, no one saw this, including his buddy so he was left out at sea, unable to move. he was roaring at the boat and when they finally came to get him, 20 minutes later, he was freaked out. he kept seeing dark shadows and things in the water. we arrived back to the boat oblivious, and his buddy was freaked out crying and stuff. but he had already made it back. listening to his account of his ordeal, I broke down crying. It was comical. he wasn't so sure!!

we hit west and saw what its like to be truelly in the middle of nowhere, we stopped in an old cattle station called normanton. Myself and mossy went ot watch the 1st of the tri nations games in a local pub. priceless. we sat at the bar and mossy goes "here, if we have to run, what are you leaving behind?". I looked at him and said "you". we got chattin to t hem anyway and they were'nt too bad, after a few pints! the night finished off with 2 guys out the back with shirts off, beating the heads off each other. everyone went out for a look and that was that.

took a detour and tennant creek and hit south for Uluru. Great trip, some pretty spectacular sights and good fun was had. On the way back up, we stopped at devils marbles (more rocks) and camped. really cool. lit a fire, had a few beers and kicked back under the stars.

In Darwin now. Will be here for a few months so the blogs will stop for a while.

Hope ye're all well and we'll talk to ye soon.

Ian and Aoileann

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