Hey Guys.

Its Craig again.

Well we have come to the end of our time here in Cairns and tomorrow we set off on our travels again down the East Coast of OZ. It has been nice however to be in one place for a while after the madness of New Zealand, moving somewhere new everyday, but we are looking forward to seeing more of Australia and putting our new Scuba Diving certifications into practice.

Yep when you last heard from us we were starting our Open Water PADI course which would allow us to scuba dive anywhere we wanted without the aid of an instructor and best of all we got to do this on the Great Barrier Reef. The first two days however were spent in a classroom and in a pool learning the basic skills. Kirsty took to these like a fish to water whereas i did not. At one point it looked like a may not even get out on to the boat as i was struggling with a few of the skills which involved taking your air regulator out of your mouth, but i got there eventually and on sunday we headed out to the reef for a 3 day, 2 night trip onboard a boat finishing off our course.

I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of scuba diving in the barrier reef bar far the most amazing experience. Now as some of you will know already we left the boat and came back to land on the second day whcih was my fault. Turns out I suffer from really bad sea sickness. I managed to get through my qualifying dives and then a fun one but could not deal with the sickness any longer and so when the next boat arrived bringing more passengers i got on it. Kirsty bless also did, she could of stayed and dived more but she came back with me. Cheers Kir. xxx

This has not deterred us however as we have gotten some details of dives that do not require live aboard trips or long periods of time aboard the boat. In fact we have already started planning our next hopeful dive which our instructor recommended which is a dive down on the HMAS Brisbane just off the coast of Mooloolaba and the best thing is we are qualified to swim inside it which is just crazy. This trip also makes Kirsty happy as it is not far from Australia Zoo.

We would have hadsome photos from the reef but unfortunately the underwater camera kirsty bought from 'Wilkos' imploded and flooded the second we hit the water, turns out it works down to 4 metres and we dive down to 18. Oh well!

So tomorrow we leave for another adventure, but for right now its time to celebrate our time here and the fact it is St. Paddys day!!

Love to all

Craig and Kirsty xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx