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Ethel, Our little van has to get us all the way to Melbourne, in 6 weeks times so we can get our flight to NZ.
We picked her up from Brisbane and spent our first night in a backpackers carpark as we still had some bits left to sort out, filling out tax returns and returning work uniforms. We also got to watch the lions play, the Brisbane lions not the British and Irish lions who were also playing, we did watch that game to and were probably the only people cheering in the cricket club at The Gabba. We're still not clued up on how Aussie Rules actually works but it involves running, kicking, punching, shoving and putting a ball in between 4 posts, once achieved the lines men wave flags at each other..........very bizarre, hopefully we can watch a game in Melbourne before heading to the rugby union capitol of the world.
The first stop was Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary with Maz wanting to hold a koala before leaving Australia it was decided that this place was best, she did get poo'd on to which Ryan laughed at.......a lot. Feeding the kangaroos was also knocked off the list, one would have followed Ryan to the car and another wanted to climb on Maz, but we ran out of food so the roo's moved to the next person. We also checked out the small farm which had a sheep sheering demonstration, we watched the farmer effortlessly remove the wool, the sheep didn't complain too much either, they only get sheered once a year so it was bad luck for this sheep as its the middle of winter. We checked out the rest of the park and then decided to hit the road.
Our plan was to head up to mooloolaba for a weekend of diving but with 4 days to get there and it only being an hours drive away we picked out some places on the map and decided to take the slowest possible 1 hour/4 day drive, the only place of interest was Bribie Island, turns out its where Australians go to retire, making us possibly the youngest people on the island, we parked up and were asleep by 930!!!
Friday morning we arrived in mooloolaba, we checked in with Gail and John, Ryan's aunt and uncle. We had a pretty chilled out day, made bacon sarnies at the beach side grills, bought some new flip flops, before meeting Gail and John for dinner and a 10 pm bed time, we think stopping at Bribie Island has aged us. Before bed we tried to do some diving homework but that didn't happen.
We woke up Saturday morning all excited to be diving the ex HMAS Brisbane, we got our gear together and headed off to meet the guys from Eco Dive. We are now certified wreck and enriched air divers. On Saturdays first dive we swam around the outside of the ship checking it out, peering inside all the holes cut into the hull. On the second dive we got to penetrate the bridge, although with the surge we got sucked in more than swam in. We also swam through a port side cut out and came out through the exhaust funnel.
For Sundays dives we had to plan our first dive, we bought picture slates of the ship which showed all the cut outs to help us pick the safest cut out to swim through, we also had to ensure we had enough air to swim through the ship and we weren't too deep as you can only penetrate so far into the ship. After completing the task we followed Tim the instructor as he led us through more sections of the ships, round the boilers, over the engines past the canons and missile silos. For the second dive we had to follow a line and not let go of it, pretty simple, until a scorpion fish decided to block your path, they're really poisonous. After we completed this final task we go to check out the wreck one last time, we also found a lion fish and an octopus. During the safety stops we also found lots of Batfish hanging around the mooring lines, waiting for someone to "loose their lunch" so they could get a good feed.
We enjoyed the diving a lot and its a shame we won't be able to do any more but we've dived some 30 odd times in the last 12 months.
We're happy to be on the road again and were off to lightning ridge in the hope of finding some huge opals that we can set in jewellery or cash it in.
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