Advanced scuba course

Yesterday I completed the first half of my advanced scuba PADI course. There was an underwater navigation dive using landmarks and a compass, a buoyancy control dive teaching how to optimally control your buoyancy in the water and lastly a much belated night dive.

The night dive was by far the best I've done so far. It's an incredible experience to observe the underwater world at night, it is truly like exploring an alien landscape. The marine life behaves quite differently at night compared to in the day, many of the fish are quite fearless and will come close enough to reach out and touch as they are attracted by the torchlight. At one point our instructor signalled to kneel on the sea bed at about 7m depth and turned off all the torches. In the pitch black we could see thousands of tiny green flashes of light every time a hand or arm moved in the water - phosphorescence generated by the plankton. It was beautiful, then when the lights went on again we were surprised to see a little port jackson shark swimming right between us. It was about 50cm long and very cute, it came right up to me and did whatever the shark equivalent of sniffing is. At one point I saw a little octopus scuttling along the rocks on its tentacles. I hung upside down in the water column for a while just watching it.

The entire dive was an incredible experience, I can't wait for the next one.

Christmas with the family

So my family finally made it out on Thursday 23rd, pretty lucky considering the snow situation at Heathrow. Christmas eve and christmas day were spent mostly in the pool and around the bbq.

Yesterday we went to a beach called Burns beach that apparently was good for snorkeling and it did not disappoint. Joe, Josh and I spent most of the day snorkeling there. Along with countless fish and underwater rock gardens we also saw a huge stingray (at least 1.5m across) and an octopus. Apparently the octopuses here can be quite aggressive if you stray too close, darting at you and wrapping their tentacles around whilst biting with their powerful beaks. Luckily we kept our distance and this octopus retreated into its hole in the rocks.

Today we went to another beach called Mullaloo a bit south of Burns beach. The snorkeling here wasn't as good but there were some great views on the beach itself ;-). The middle of the day was almost too hot even for me at a toasty 43 degrees. Then we went up to Burns beach later in the day and snorkeled some more. Actually the name is rather unfortunate because after two days on the beach I am somewhat sunburned as well as being very tanned. Tomorrow we are going to spend an easy day in Freo out of the sun. My advanced scuba dive course starts tomorrow and finishes Friday so I have that to look forward to as well. Not sure what I'm doing for New Year's yet exactly but it will involve going out somewhere in Perth and it will be awesome.

Laters.

Last night I went out on a bender in Perth with some guys I met. It was awesome, the bars are expensive but they all decided that because I was english and knew the Queen personally I had to be bought lots of drinks so it was great. I stayed in a tiny little cheap hostel that was about 50 billion degrees and woke up covered in sweat and dehydrated. Luckily after a couple of litres of water and a huge fry up I managed to escape a hangover.

In the afternoon I got the train into Freo and met up with some guys from the hostel - we went cliff jumping again, it was sweet. My family are due to arrive this evening, and my friends from home are skyping me tomorrow morning. I am very excited.

EDIT: Also, totally forgot to mention I have a job sorted for after christmas doing fieldwork, $250 a day BOOYAH.

Rain

It rained for most of today and the temperature dropped to an icy 21 degrees. Apparently it's due to a cyclone in the north and is pretty freak weather for this time of year. I did not sign up for this, I want my money back Australia.

U2

Yesterday Evan got us cheap tickets to go see U2. They played loads of their old stuff and it was AWESOME.

Today I am back at Ians and sadly although I was expecting to see my family this evening the snow has prevented them from leaving until thursday. Sad times.

An end to my romp in Freo

Tonight is my last night in Freo. The last two have been great, I worked Thursday and Friday for Matty then blew a lot of it last night but it was awesome.

Today I am going to make a pilgrimmage to the statue of Bon Scott. Then tomorrow my family is coming to Oz which I am very excited about.

Laters.

Cliff jumping

Last night I played drinking games with the guys from the hostel until about 2am, then today we got the bus to Point Walter on the Swan river. There are some awesome cliffs there and we spent the afternoon jumping from at least ten meters into the water. The climbing there was great as well, the rocks were almost perfect for scrambling on and there were a lot of climbers there. I took some photos, here they are:

Freo is awesome

So, update on the last couple of days.

On Thursday night Coco busted out a couple of these wooden box drum things that you sit on and hit with your hands to make a cool sound. Then someone else got a Didgeridoo and two other guys brought their guitars out and we started to play some crap. At first I was pretty hesitant and bad on the drums but after a few beers I loosened up and bit and started whaling away. I'm sure my timing was lousy but I ended up jamming with this one guy on guitar for about an hour, I'd pick a beat and he'd strum some chords, then I'd modify the beat to match him and it all just flowed so well. I've never done that before, it was a great feeling. My hands were so swollen after I'd finished from whacking the thing but I definitely wanna do it again.

On Friday I went out to some bars, then this morning I did another scuba dive. One of the women there had a camera and I asked her to take a photo of me at the bottom of the sea, hopefully she will remember to email it and I'll put it up somewhere. I looked up at one point during the dive after staring at the stuff on the bottom for a while and almost shat myself as I was surrounded by hundreds of silver fish about two feet long each circling slowly in a sort of cylindrical wall around me at a range of about a metre. They looked pretty mean although they are of course totally harmless and are just inquisitive about the divers.

My next dive is on Tuesday and it's a night dive. I am very excited.

So last night the dive was cancelled due to poor visibility. Boo. Not really surprising though as it had been windy all day and the waves kicked up a whole bunch of sediment and crap from the bottom. Not a problem really, there's a day dive on Saturday and the night dive has been rescheduled to next tuesday.

Instead I went into Perth to have a drink with Evan. Bon Jovi were playing in the Subiaco Oval so we sat outside and listened and got drunk. Actually I don't remember coming home but I woke up in the right bed so I guess it worked out pretty well.

I left all my stuff at the scuba shop including my towel so I couldn't have a shower until I got it back. I managed to stagger there this morning and found it all neatly piled with a note on top saying "Sam, little bird you forget all your stuff!! Your frenchy instructor" It made me laugh. They must think I'm a complete disgrace at the dive shop, I always seem to be leaving my stuff there or forgetting shit or being generally absent minded.

I might do some snorkelling today. Laters.

scuba scuba scuba

I spent today diving off a boat in two places around Rottnest island off the coast of Perth. I am now a qualified open water scuba diver (woo!).

Diving is freakin' AWESOME. I saw a whole ton of reef fish, brightly coloured nudibranches, countless soft and hard corals, some shoals of schooling herring and once a big ray flapping off in the distance. The visibility was amazing, our first dive was 18 metres and you could see all the way to the bottom from the surface. It's like entering another world down there, all you can hear are your own bubbles and some faint background sea noise as you float serenely past all the reef wildlife. Some larger damselfish and some small schooling shoals were attracted to us and swam with us for the duration of the first dive. They come close enough for you to reach out and touch them as they swim with you. I guess it gives them security from predators when they hang around divers because the divers are so big nothing is gonna bother them really.

I get a free dive on wednesday because I did the course and it's a night dive - all the shop staff go and a whole bunch of other guys, it's kind of a diving club. I can't wait to dive at night, that's gonna be amazing. I think I want to do the advanced scuba course so I can do deep dives (up to 40 metres) and wreck dives. There are a few wrecks on the Bell Park wreck trail in Rockingham, I know there is a downed plane wreck there too so I'd love to go and explore that. There is an advanced scuba course on the 30th of December so I'll have to wait til then, I look forward to it though.

I can't really describe what it's like to be a tourist in the underwater world, you have to do it for yourself to understand it. It's like going into space or something, it really is a penetration into a totally alien world with it's own unique sounds and feel. This is something I have dreamed of for such a long time, I hope I get a lot of opportunities to do it again.

I spent about 3 hours at the bottom of a pool today practising technique and safety procedures for scuba diving. I am in a very small group with only two other guys who are pretty competent so we can get through it all really fast. Our instructor is this really cute and super enthusiastic french chick so that's awesome as well :-). Half the time I find myself just listening to her accent rather than what she's actually saying.

Diving is much more complicated than you might think - the risks of both decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis are much more real than you might expect and you have to use a dive computer or dive tables to calculate how long you can stay under at certain depths without having to stop to decompress on the way up. Also due to the fact you're breathing compressed air, if you come up too fast while holding your breath your lungs can rupture so the number one rule when scuba diving is never to hold your breath. Breathing underwater is an awesome experience, I can't wait to try it out in the real ocean tomorrow.

There is a lot of stuff going on at the hostel this weekend. It seems like a really great place, the staff are always organising good events for the people that stay here and yesterday there was free goulash for everyone. Everyone who is staying here is really friendly. I can't drink much this weekend cos I don't want to dive hungover but I will go to the events anyway and have a chat with some new people.

Staying here has given me the travel bug so badly, I just wanna up and disappear into Asia for six months or something. All in good time, I will stay here for long enough to make some good money and maybe then it will be time to jet off somewhere really exotic.

A stay in Freo

I am currently staying in a hostel called the old firestation in freo. It is quirky but cool, it even has a real fireman's pole which my bed is next to. The people here are really friendly, I stayed up last night playing drinking games with some french guys and a swede. I booked a scuba diving course for this weekend, I already passed the mandatory medical exam and I'm good to go. I have to get up early tomorrow cos it starts at 8. I am very excited and looking forward to spending at least a week here.