Angourie Holiday Photos Are Online

I never did get around to writing about our New Year holiday in Angourie and it's a bit difficult now as it was so long ago. But I did finally get around to putting my photographs from the trip online so feel free to check them out at http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/20051231_Angourie/.

Just briefly, six of us rented a beach house for a week from 27th December in a little village called Angourie in New South Wales, 4 km south of a town called Yamba. Angourie is famed for its surf breaks as it has beautiful beaches and there is always a protected spot.

The six in question were Toby and I, Mark and Mindi and Oscar and Jackie, friends Toby knows from his uni days who live in Sydney. Staying nearby was Mark's flatmate Guy and his family who were visiting from Hong Kong and California. For New Year's Eve even more folk arrived, including Pete and Daneale, friends who were with us on our Lady Musgrave Island paradise holiday last New Year.

It was a great trip, the weather was fantastic, we surfed and snorkelled. I met a squid for the first time and we saw lots of sting rays. We did yoga on the beach, ate good food, went on nice walks, windsurfed. Oscar's latest hobby is movie making so we spent a fair amount of time filming a five minute movie for a film competition he wanted to enter. Everyone got to play a part. Toby was the lead: a guy who is a bit of a lout and then has an epiphany and becomes all zen-like. I was a beach "babe" he tries to chat up only I wasn't allowed a speaking part because of my "weird" accent. Don't worry, my time will come. There is an aspiring actress within me as most of you who know me I'm sure will agree. I just need the right part and Oscar clearly didn't have it (although where he got the idea from that I could be a beach "babe" frankly is beyond me.) I'm yet to see the footage. I do hope I sucked my belly in enough. Didn't help that I got to beach-babe with Jackie who is a beach babe and has beautiful Croatian tanned olive skin. So, I'll be hoping that I actually look nothing like me really so that I can pretend it was someone else. The weirdest thing was wearing stage make-up to the beach!

My blog looks TERRIBLE in Internet Explorer

I have just discovered that my blog looks awful in Internet Explorer. All the text is really big - good if you're a bit short-sighted I suppose - and there's a massive block of just nothing at the top of the page so that you have to scroll down to actually read the posts.

I never use IE. I don't trust it and I don't particularly like it. I much prefer Mozilla FireFox and can heartily recommend it to anyone. But anyway, there are probably other equally good alternatives to IE out there.

So this post is just a quick apology to those of you who use IE and think my blog is awful. Really, it's not. Not if you have a decent browser.

Let me know by way of a comment on this post whether you use IE - I can probably figure it out from my stats anyway but at least if you leave a comment I know it's really bugging you - and if there are enough of you for me to care then I'll think about fixing it up.

But really, you probably shouldn't be using IE anyway. Not if you can help it.

Diving on Straddie

WARNING: This is a very long post. If you want to go straight to the photos then feel free, although the blog does explain them a bit.

I have just had a fantastic weekend. Isn't it great to get to work on Monday morning and be able to say that? To really feel like you made the most of your two days off work?

Friday night saw Toby and I packing bags ready for an early morning start. Things were looking bad when we couldn't find my wetsuit. We were about to go over to North Stradbroke Island (known as Straddie) with the sole intention of scuba-diving. We hadn't dived since we were on Lady Musgrave a year ago and had heard great things about Flat Rock just off the north eastern tip of Straddie. Well, not having a wetsuit was just awful, not just for this weekend as we were sure I'd be able to hire one, but we started thinking of how I wouldn't be able to snorkel and how I wouldn't want to do much else water-based once the water cools down in a few months. Not only that but shopping for a wetsuit is not that much fun and this one had been a gift from Toby almost three years ago when I first got here and point blank refused to spend more than five minutes in the water during the winter. Besides which, where on earth was it? We just couldn't figure out where it had gone to and my last memory of it was washing it after snorkelling a couple of days before we left Angourie. I couldn't believe I'd lost it and was so annoyed and upset with myself but also couldn't understand how no one else had picked it up either.


Beautiful sunrise

We had an exceptionally early start the next morning. We woke up in time to leave the house at 4.15am and drive down to Cleveland, east of Brisbane, where we were meeting Mark, Mindi, Guy and Nobina and getting on the ferry. For our efforts we were rewarded with a remarkable sunrise with deep reds and oranges (and I just kept thinking of the "red sky at night" poem which I think does not end well for the red sky in the morning). We got to the ferry just on time and loaded our gear into Guy's car. I could have kissed Mark when he said "is this yours?" and thrust a lump of black neoprene into my hands - my wetsuit - but I made do with jumping up and down and hugging him, excitedly exclaiming "my wetsuit" like an idiot.

We arrived at the house we were staying in, where the dive operation is run from, at about 7am and no one else was awake so Ken, the boat driver, suggested we go for a surf. I swam and read whilst the others surfed and by 8.30am we were preparing our gear. There was a fair amount of swell so we launched the boat from a protected beach. It was so much fun speeding out through the surf and the boat was airborne a couple of times as we jumped over the waves. It only took a few minutes to get out to Flat Rock but then we had difficulty getting the anchor to catch and it became more and more of a mission for me to not get sea-sick until eventually I had to be helped into my gear by Toby and Ken because taking my eyes from the horizon for more than a few seconds was too risky and there's only so much kitting up you can do without the use of your eyes.

Finally we got in the water and then got under it as quickly as we could because, as anyone who scuba-dives and gets sea-sick will tell you, that's the only place where you're going to feel okay. The surface of the water just doesn't cut it - moves too much, you see.

We went down to about 18 metres, maxing at about 22. The visibility was good - at least 15 metres and it was nice diving in a group. There were about 10 of us in all although we all eventually got separated into our buddy pairs. I immediately got disoriented, as usual, and so followed everyone else around although I was frequently distracted by things I found to photograph.

This was one of the most exciting and nerve-wracking things about the dive: taking my digital camera down for the first time. It brought a whole new dimension to diving and made me look at everything in a different way. I learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do and I know I have a whole lot more to learn so I can't wait to give it another go.

So, what did we see? Well, we saw lots of leopard sharks, which are beautiful. They're large, docile creatures who mainly hang out on the bottom but, like most marine life, are very graceful when they do spring into action. We saw a couple of turtles - probably green turtles - including one exceptionally friendly one which came to say hello to Toby and I during our safety stop and sat with us for a while just chatting. Unfortunately this was after I'd switched the camera off. Toby stretched the friendship a little too far when he decided to pat the turtle who consequently decided he'd had enough of us and made off - just as I was preparing to take a picture. We saw a huge shoal of reef bannefish and lots of pairs of butterflyfish. There were lots of anenomes and urchins, soft and hard corals, the usual beautifully coloured tropical fish and some larger pelagics. We saw wrasses and gropers and about three huge eagle rays flying overhead. Apparently there were also some bronze whalers (sharks) in the vicinity, as seen by some of the other divers in our group, but thankfully we didn't see them. I think that might have been scary.


Leopard shark swimming past fish

It was a beautiful dive and I had an absolute whale of a time, if you'll excuse the pun. Unfortunately, thanks to the sea-sickness it was over all too soon as I started to run low on air. We surfaced, gave Ken our tanks and weight-belts and then snorkelled whilst waiting for the others. Actually, Toby snorkelled. I just hung out on the float line trying not to be sick. Even in such deep water there was a lot to be seen from the surface, including a shoal of yellow-tail kingfish and one of the hugest turtles I have ever seen which surfaced for air not far from the boat.

Our next stop was Manta Ray Bommie and apparently this is the time of year to see mantas. Unfortunately, it was not my time to see mantas and although there was at least one around, which Nobina and Guy spotted, I didn't catch it. This was a much shallower dive - around 10 metres. There was less coral and more rock. More leopard sharks, lots of little stingrays, a wobbegong, blue damselfish, a little black anenomefish in his anenome (they are so cute!) and a small moray eel, possibly a white-mouthed moray. The challenge here was the incredibly strong currents which seemed to be running in all directions, usually opposite to the one we were swimming in, if I may be so bold as to use the word swim. In actual fact it consisted more of kicking like billy-oh (whatever that is, maybe it means kicking like a billy-goat which we probably were doing) and pulling oneself along the bottom by grabbing rocks. Just to stay in one spot required immense effort. Infinity Pools have nothing on these currents. My talents as an underwater photographer were truly tested as I struggled to operate the camera (which is huge when it's in its housing) with one hand whilst using the other to cling to a rock. Toby decided he liked a particular leopard shark so much that he was going to lie down with it and give it a cuddle. I amused myself by taking photographs of urchins and anenomes whilst pretending I was in a really strong wind tunnel (which is what it felt like) but after 5 minutes of that my patience had worn quite thin and I dragged him away. Well, actually I just prised his fingers from the rock and the current swept him away. On our way back to the boat we saw a little jelly fish floating on the surface of the water. As we approached it started to flash lights at us - red, blue and green up and down its sides. It was very cool and we later identified it as possibly being a harmless Comb-jelly or Sea Gooseberry.


Toby and his new best friend.

We were extremely knackered after all that, especially as we had a considerable swim back to the boat. When we got back to land (oh yes, sweet non-moving land!), we ate lots, slept, drank beer, ate more, slept again and then some people got back on the boat and did it all again on Sunday morning but Toby and I decided on a more sedate snorkel at The Gorge. We've been here a few times and there's always lots to see but visibility can be an issue. We saw another shark, which I think was a brown-banded catshark, an eagle ray, a shoal of butter bream, which are my favourite fish, possibly stemming from the fact that they entertained me on the saftey stop of my first ever open water dive but also because they're very friendly and will just gather around you and come right up to your mask eyeing you up. They're so cute. The highlight here for me was the group of about 50 squid that were just hanging out about a metre below the surface, their eyes glowing. Very cute and only the second time I've seen squid whilst snorkelling.

We were exhausted by the time we got home on Sunday afternoon and after a nap and some food we cycled down to the new Lake Kawana Community Centre for a Xavier Rudd gig. It was soooo good. We missed the support band but got there in time to see some aboriginal dancers who were very cool. With a beautiful voice a little like Ben Harper or Paul Simon (apparently both influences of his) he plays all his own instruments (didgeridoo, drums, shakers, guitar) at the same time. Very impressive.

I won't bore you any further with lists and lists of cool stuff we've seen. Enjoy the photographs.

Poetry: A walk on the beach during big surf

Crashing Wave
Originally uploaded by LinsB.

Ok, this is another first for my blog world.

Some of you already know that I make vague attempts at writing poetry. For the past few years I've wondered whether to share it. And now I've decided I will. I don't make any claims to be a great poet, I don't particularly want to be a great poet, it is merely a way of expressing myself when I'm inspired by something. If you like it, then great, if you don't then it doesn't matter. I'll pre-fix any poetry post with Poetry so you can avoid it if you wish.

By the way the title of this post is not necessarily the name of the poem (it doesn't have one) but it's what I was doing when I thought of the poem.

Here goes....

Like a mother, she nurtures and soothes.
Her earth-children seek refuge in her belly,
And admire her beauty and power
As they frolick in her embrace.

But today she is different, uncalm.
Her swollen, lumpy anger warns us to stay away,
She could turn on us at any time.
The children choose to watch from afar,
Unwilling to risk surrending themselves to her forevermore.

She rises and swells,
Her pride dark and heavy as she glistens in the sun,
And she sends her bands of white warriors
Marching onto the land,
Forming lakes and rivulets,
Depositing their foam flags which say,
"She has been here and will come again",
Before retreating to the frontline,
Ready to march again.

Today she is not angry,
She will not invade.
She merely seeks to warn us that she can,
To remind us to love and respect her,
That she provides us with food, water storage,
Transport and play.

And as we watch in awe we realise
That without her our world would be very different.

Good news for Climate Change

I don't normally blog about this kind of political stuff but those of you who know me well will also know that short of becoming a tree-hugging hippie I'm fairly passionate about climate change and other environmental issues. Recently I've been wracking my brains about how I can make a positive change to the world, trying to figure out what needs to be done to slow down the race towards higher global temperatures and sea-level rises that seems to be occurring for the sake of an easy life and fast cars. I figured that there are two things that need to happen.

Firstly, the general population needs to be educated. And not just about the doom and gloom statistics of coastal areas being underwater in one hundred years, crops failing due to dought and plagues of disease-ridden insects converging upon our happy homes. People need to know that it can be okay. They need to know the best and worst case scenarios and what positive action they can take to ensure we head towards the best-case rather than the worst.

Secondly, governments need to take action. They need to implement policies, introduce taxes, ensure that the costs of making positive environmental changes outweigh those of doing nothing. The Australian government hasn't done much in this respect so far and that is probably because they aren't pressured to do so by the public, which could be because the public doesn't fully understand climate change, or if they do, they feel overwhelmed and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Which is why I was really pleased to see one of Australia's top environmental scientists (I was getting ready for work so I actually missed who it was) on DumbRise this morning presenting a piece on Climate Change for Dummies. From what I could gather (whilst flitting through the living room with my toothbrush in my mouth) it was real basic stuff, such as what is a greenhouse gas and how does a greenhouse gas contribute to global warming, but this is great stuff, because this is the kind of TV show that the majority of the population watches, and these are the people that can make a change, the people that have a car for every person in their household, people that drive their huge fuel-guzzling 4WD round the corner to the newsagent, people who get a fleet of plastic carrier bags in the supermarket and then throw them all away when they get home, people that drive their kids to school, leave the TV on all day and lights on all night, people who can make very minor changes in their lives and together make a difference to the future of the world. Let's hope this is the beginning of something.

By the way, for those of you that don't know DumbRise is my "pet" name for Sunrise, a morning TV show a little bit like TVAM, or Good Morning Britain or whatever the ITV show is called now, but not as good. And that's the best morning TV show I can find on Australian terrestial TV. There is no equivalent of the BBC News Breakfast Show and it's been driving me crazy for the past few years. Hence the rather cruel nickname.

I went to Christchurch, New Zealand in November...

.... and finally I have got around to writing about it.


Toby and I outside a winery. Yum.

The first few days of my trip were taken up by the ANZ PeopleSoft SIG/Oracle HEUG - whatever it's called these days (boring work conference thing - yawn which actually wasn't too bad but is definitely not good blog subject matter). The weather was awful: cold, wet and windy but I didn't really care, partly because it's so rarely like that in Queensland that it was a bit of a novelty and it kind of reminded me of home, and partly because I was so darn busy I hardly got any time to spend in it. The public telephone and calling card system in Christchurch frequently drove me batty as I tried to contact Toby back in Australia to finalise the details of our trip over the weekend.

The conference finished on Wednesday and after a wee bit of shopping and some organising I was met by Ann Buckle, wife of Don, cousin of Colin (my Grandpa). These are the New Zealand contingents of Buckles and, until very recently when I shifted continents, the lone southern hemisphere representatives. Ann drove me back to their lovely little home, put me up in their very comfortable spare room and cooked me a yummy dinner before I crashed out.

Christchurch is quite pretty as far as cities go. It's small too - only 350,000 occupants. I did a bit of sightseeing whilst I was there. I was lucky enough to catch an Ansell Adams photography exhibition at the Art Gallery and also a very interesting Korean exhibition, full of what are probably more accurately described as "installations" than works of art. It was quite fun, the signature piece being a snake made from computer keyboard keys protecting a nest of eggs made from PC mice (or is it mouses?). I also checked out the museum which was quite impressive and had an interesting exhibition on Antartica amongst other things. I travelled on the tourist tram more out of laziness than anything else. I learnt a few bits and pieces but can't really say it was worth the $12.50. There's a lovely little river winding through the city, called the Avon. And you can punt along it (or at least be punted). Punting along the Avon in Christchurch (which is in Canterbury)? It's all very confusing.

Toby arrived on Thursday night and his plane was late. He was three hours behind us so he was okay but Don, Ann and I struggled to stay awake and get him home from the airport. The next day Toby and I wandered into town via Hagley Park and the Botanical Gardens which are huge and very beautiful. Upon discovering a patch of daisies I regressed to a 7 year old and insisted on sitting amongst them making a daisy chain which I then fashioned into a necklace. I could never quite manage that finishing touch as a child so obviously my jewellery making skills are coming in handy.

After marvelling over the many huge trees, which were apparently planted by the settlers when they arrived and chasing birds catching worms we found ourselves in Cathedral Square and waited for our guide to pick us up and take us on the Vin de Pays Wine Tour for the afternoon. We were the only two on the tour and had a great time visiting five wineries, starting with a luncheon platter in the first. The countryside was interesting and the weather was surprisingly hot. Apparently the Waipara Valley where the wineries are has its own microclimate a few degrees warmer than Christchurch so we sweated in our jeans. The wines were good - although not spectacular. I was surprised to find I preferred the usually heavier whites, such as the Chardonnays which were actually quite light, and the lighter reds, rather than the Sauvignon Blancs I usually go for. We bought ourselves a couple of bottles of port and desert wine as we went along the way. At the final winery, Pegasus Bay, I finally found the wine I was looking for, a beautifully crisp, fruity Sauvignon Blanc. So obviously I bought a couple of bottles. However, when I got it home and looked at the label more closely I realised that it was actually grown in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, confirming what I already thought - that Marlborough does the best whites in the region.

Once deposited back at Cathedral Square we went off to the cinema to see the very Christmassy The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, more than a week before it was even due to be released in Australia. I loved it. It took me right back to my childhood and made me want to read all of the books again. Tilda Swinton was excellent as the ice queen.

The next morning we headed back into town and onto a bus to the beautiful harbour town of Akaroa, armed with my new toy - an underwater housing for my camera. Akaroa is on Banks Peninsular which is the remnants of two old volcanoes, their craters now filled with water forming Littleton Harbour and the harbour that Akaroa sits on. It's a lovely little fishing village with a heavy French influence - even some of the street names are in French. We didn't look around too much though because we'd come with one purpose in mind: to swim with dolphins.

The dolphins at Akaroa are the rarest breed in the world, living only in New Zealand, and one of the smallest, averaging just over a metre in length. They are called Hector's Dolphins named after Sir James Hector, a scientist and curator of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, who examined the first specimen of the dolphin. We booted and suited into extremely thick wetsuits and sped out on a very fast boat, looking for dolphins to jump in the nippy 14C water with. At first it seemed like we mightn't be in luck, although the tour company did promise to fully refund us should we see no dolphins and to give us half our money back should we see them but not get to swim with them. It was breeding season and we weren't allowed to get in the water with a mother and calf. We did see such a pair from the boat though and the baby was tiny.

Eventually, after jumping in and out of the water a couple of times, we found an interested pod of about 12 or so dolphins and hopped in the water with them. They put on an amazing show of leaps and twirls out of the water. I think they spent more time watching us than we did them as the water was pretty murky and it was a matter of luck as to whether you had your head below the water and were looking in the right direction when a dolphin happened to cruise by. And when you did it was an amazing feeling. They would swim so close you could almost touch them (except you're not supposed to as they have very sensitive skin) but they were also very fast and were gone before you could comprehend what had happened. I tried to swim after one but he was way too fast for me and the murky water freaked me out a bit once I was below the surface. Toby had the knack of diving much more than I did and a few times the dolphins dived down with him and then swam back up with him. All in all it was one of the most special experiences I have ever had. I tried to get the hang of the digital camera underwater housing beforehand but we still ended up with a lot of terrible pictures of not much at all, a film of the lens cap, 1 second films when we thought we were taking still pictures, and an incredibly long movie of not much at all apart from some very arty shots of the mountains, some lovely singing as I played Snorkel Disco to attract the dolphins, and the dolphins' clickety-click responses. We got a couple of gems though, including a 10 second movie of a dolphin swimming right past me, echo-locating, and Toby took a couple of good photographs.


Hector's Dolphin leaping out of the water

Download the dolphin movie. This is an MP4 file so you'll probably need something like Quicktime or VLC Media Player to play it.

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with the lovely Buckles, Don, Ann and their daughter Janet and I must thank them for being so hospitable and for putting up with us for so long.

My very brief encounter with New Zealand has left me eager to explore more. It's a beautiful and varied country, reminding me a little bit of home but still very different. I have uploaded some (lots!) of our photos to a server Mark set up for me (thanks Mark!). Check them out at http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/20051218_NewZealand-Christchurch/

Happy New Year!!!!!

Well, whaddaya know, it's 2006!

This is a mega-short post to say Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you all had a great Christmas. I did! We stayed at home this year and Toby's immediate family joined us. There was lots of food, presents and champagne. Then we went away on holiday and had a great time and a fantastic New Year's Eve party - the best I've had since 2000!

Unfortunately whilst away I damaged my mobile phone slightly (it got very wet) and is now refusing to play nice so I have been unable to text anyone and say "hi" or indeed to pick up any texts you may have sent to me. Perhaps you could send your good wishes again via email as I'm sure some of you have tried to contact me over the festive period.

I am in the middle of writing an update on our trip to Christchuch before Christmas and will hopefully finish that soon and then let you know all about our great holiday in Angourie over New Year.

Hope to see most, if not all of you before 2006 has ended. Take care everyone and I hope you all have a fantastic year. Please keep in touch.