Christmas and the Barrier reef

well a big gap since the last blog..not many internet cafes in Canberra! and our internet is not yet connected.

we had Christmas on the beach and swam in the sea (albeit between the 'stinger nets') lovely setting here in Port Douglas, very hot and humid, not very good for keeping your hair straight (hannah!)

we have just finished 2 days of diving on the Great Barrier Reef great coral, both soft and hard, many fish, parrot, emperor wrasse (big 3ft) came to say hello! we saw a white tipped reef shark (6ft) who was minding his own business laying on the sandy bottom until a gaggle of divers 'swooped' (not sure if you can swoop underwater!) but he casually looked at us and with a flick of his tail cruised into the deeper water too deep for us to follow - obviously quite clever these toothy fish!

As you can see from the picture we are wearing rather attractive 'stinger suits' to keep the deadly box jellyfish at bay. the water was 28 degrees C, so no need for a wet suit!

we are off to the rainforest tomorrow, although it is rather rainforesty here already we have had torrential rain which brought the frogs out (yep justin only managed to narrowly miss standing on a large example of one of the typical rainforest frogs (green with yellow eyes) who was sheltering on the pavement from the rain.

We'll have another day on the beach and in the pool before heading off to Sydney for the New Year celebrations. We are planning to get a grandstand view of the Harbour Bridge from either the opera house or the Botanic gardens.

That's all for now..........

Stuck in Singapore

Well after a delayed start at Heathrow due to an ill passenger, we entered the 747 and we told that we could...go upstairs as a pair of seats were available! great! very high off the ground.
We settled ourselves down with a glass of bubbly, tucked in our cushions and reclined the 6 million postion seat.
The 3 course lunch was scrummy and then we settled down to watch the myriad of films that were available.
all was going swimmingly as the captaion managed to make up 1 hr of the delayed flight until we landed at Singapore, where we were told that we were to have a 40 min refuling and then be on our way again (we dashed to ther club lounge and had a shower), returned to the gate and boarded the plane....and sat there.....until the captain informed us that one of the doors seemed to be broken.blast! so after a number of hours onboard we were disembarked and now we will be staying in Singapore the night!
Oh well a further adventure to our trip to Aus!

Jasper secured

Much Yowling later, (he even started doing the really low moaning sounds to add effect to his obvious misery!)
The meeting of the resident cat Missy, was composed of a brief spell of hissing then both skulking off to darkened corners of the lounge.
Poor jasper didnt really eat for a day or two, not really a problem at the moment due to his impressive girth, however he did manage some milk so he wont entirely fade away!

On returning home on Sunday at 5pm (ish) we encountered a blizzard at the top of Birdlip it was a brief reminder of the weather we would be leaving in about 4 weeks, massive flakes splatted on the windscreen - brilliant!

Poor Tiger greeted us with a pathetic meow, he had been lonely (no-one to fight with anymore), he'll be off soon to live in Bristol.

The first consignment of 'stuff' has gone off to Aus today! so no washing machine, dishwasher and just a suitcase of clothes each to cater for the -2 degree mornings in UK and then the 30 degree days in Aus!

Jasper (cat #1) is also moving today to Kent to be looked after by the parents (thank you!), so we expect a LOT of yowling en route! hopefully there'll be no hold ups on the M25! (ha ha ha)

Location sorted!

The destination is nearly confirmed