Well, I have neglected to post on me bloggy for some time since arriving here in Oz, guess i've either been too busy or, as I'm here with emma, don't want to spending too long on the computer while she twiddles her toes. But at the moment she is currently upstairs with 3rd degree burns so I guess I can sneak on the interweb. The little ginger gnome got burnt to a crisp yesterday out on the reef, despite having factor infinity on and actually not being in the sun much. If she didnt like garlic so much I'd probably have accused her of being a vampire and tried staking her. I think i'll do the 'mirror test' tonight to make sure anyway. Diving on the barrier reef yesterday was great, havn't actually been in the water for over a year, and that was in the baltic atlantic sea off Donegal back home so it is hardly comparable. As we are both certified divers we were allowed to just pair (or ''buddy'' as they insist on calling it) up and just go off and explore ourselves on the 2nd dive which was awesome. Lots of canyons and crevices to crawl through and loadsa fish.

Another highlight of my time here was the Blue Mountains just a few hours outside Sydney. Me, generally having a fetish for anything resembling a mountain, enjoyed it alot and the scenery was amazing. We both had a great time, took loads photos which i'm sure will surface soon. The small town of Katooba was cool, stayed there for a few days while exploring a small corner of the the range, saw the 3 Sisters frock formation and bought all the usual touristy crap.

On the way to Melborne, to our wisom, we decided to strop at Canberra, the nations capital. Seems a logical choice you would think? I havn't yet told you of how, from Nepal, I sent a slighty panicd text message to Emma saying that we have to cancel our visit to Canberra (we had originally planned on staying there 3 or4 days). I had spoken to 3 english people, 3 seprate canadians, an american, and 2 australians (and read in Bill Brysons brilliantly funny book 'Down under') who all said that I was crazy for wanting to spend time there. Words and phrases ranging from ''theres nothing there mate!'', ''Its just a few trees and parliament house'' and ''theres no atmosphere'' all the way to ''are you %#&$* mad?'' and, my particluar favourite ''its a souless place...the people there don't have souls''. I think the clincher was ''theres almost no bars there and the nightlife is next to zero''.

Anyways, without going into any of that, I'll just say all of the above were correct. But it was a nice enough place, but as the capital 'city'? No way. It was just trees, parks and large empty looking government builings. I half expected to see hundreds of white haired small children walking about like 'Village of the damned'' and a UFO hovering over our hostel. The hostel was nice incidently, shame that it was a 2 and a half hour walk through no-mans land just to get there.

Stayed with my Uncle in Sydney for first week, will be back there for a few days at the end of this week before flying back home.

I hope someones been taping the series of Spooks on BBC1 for me, or therel be tea spilt.

Gotta go, i think emma needs more bandages and painkillers....