Living Large in Cairns

Made it safely to cairns last night on another (don't know how this happens) plane full of footie players - this time a team going to cairns for one crazy weekend at the end of the season. Felt very sorry for the stewardesses as they had to cope with 40 or 50 guys in matching red rugby shirts calling out their names every five seconds and draining the cash bar.

The upshot is, i'm now sheltering from the heat of the day in the cool internet cafe on the main boulevard in Cairns - it's warm, beautiful, and it has that weird, indefinable tropical smell (something to do with rotting vegetation or animal life). The hostel has a pool and spa bath, you don't need blankets on the bed, and the most pressing thing for me to do today was lie on the grass at the lagoon and read books. Life is pretty good...

Booked the scuba diving course me, Tai, Paul, and Rob are taking which starts monday - 6 days, four of them living on a sailboat on the great barrier reef and something like 14 or 15 dives, hopefully including a night dive, and a dive down to a shipwreck... Still trying to figure out a way to take many underwater photos, but may have to resort to putting a ziplock bag over my camera and sticking it underwater.

Anyways, hopefully this is educational, and not too jealousy inspiring, for those who care about my life... let me know in the comments if there's any more relevant information you'd like to see...

Great Ocean Road (inanimate objects galore)

Hmmm, again, catching up a little with the actual events... Paul, Tai, Rob, and myself spent three days driving the great ocean road in a rented Hyundai...

Good times, but some very australian moments came out, especially when we were cruising around a tiny port town looking for a motel room for the night... "What? you mean you want one room with a single queen sized bed for 4 blokes? That's a bit dodgy, I'm afraid I can't rent you any rooms... " Good to know that the innkeepers of the southern coast are a tolerant bunch.

Anyways, somewhere out there is a photo gallery i'm setting up of all the photos, especially the many, many inanimate object shots out there including:

Rock

Rock in ocean

Rock in ocean with waves

Rock in ocean with waves and blurry Chris face

More to come, hope people are somewhat distracted by this... :)

Wine tasting

Ah, good to spend the morning putting back 15-20 glasses of wine... Mostly this post was about checking that i could put pictures up... This is at the orlando winery (Jacob's Creek) and was our first tasting of the day. The bus ride started out as fairly boring and quiet, but by the time we'd been through our first tasting (8 glasses of wine and port to finish) people got chatty pretty fast. Spent the day with the same blend of german, swedish, american, and british tourists that fills the hostels and a few old people for luck. Good times, but even by the time lunch rolled around (after three wineries and 20 glasses of wine) I was pretty done. Cut to Chris staggering onto the overnight train to Melbourne from Adelaide with a head full of vino....

First Post and the Backstory

So, just to bring everyone, including myself up to speed, i'm currently jetsetting around Australia and South East Asia as a practical alternative to doing something with my life. Stay tuned for narcissistic ramblings about my travels and plenty of empty photos of inanimate objects.