Finally....a holiday

Well it's frankly been too long, but I'm finally on holiday in Cairns, Queensland.

I arrived on friday night after a hectic week of work that saw me present my first conference paper at Fire Australia 2008. Having arrived at 11pm with an early start the next day on a dive trip things didn't start too well, with a voice message that the dive had been cancelled. Spent the night listening to the heavy tropical rain and was realising why. However, things did clear up in the morning and and I found another dive company running and jumped on board.

The diving was fantastic, even though the 90 minute ride out to the reef was a sea sickness party with all invited! Having got over that, we did three dives and I got to see Nudibranchs(sp?) -little colourful things, Clown fish(I'm giving him the 'evils' below) white tip reef shark, Green Turtle, Blue Spotted Ray, a giant Maori Wrasse (pictured below) and heaps more. A few pics from the trip courtesy of the on-board photographer) ....

Karen arrives from Sydney on Sunday morning and we head straight up to Port Douglas to spend a few days relaxing and exploring the Daintree rainforest...Caaaan't wait!