Well - I am now only just over a week away from bidding fairwell to OZ. I've spent the last 3 and half months here in WA, the majority of that here in Perth. Perth is a beautiful city - it's large enough to call itself a modern city, with enough places to welcome in inebriation and an ever widening stomach, but lacks some of the traps that other city's have to cope with eberyday. In Perth, if it all gets a little too much, we could always just pop down to some amazing beaches that stretch on forever, or walk up to, allegedly, the world's largest park of its kind, which affords an awesome view of the city..... But enough, I'm not getting paid for this, so why go on!

Before I actually got around to doing some hard work, I went on a wee trip for 2 weeks. Devon, Kirtsen and I hired a car and whizzed around the south west of WA - which included some more diving, wine and beer tasting, beaches, a coupla hikes, Australia Day celebrations, some more beer, some more beaches, a lot of driving - but had a hell of a great time - the area of OZ is really beautiful, and not what one would imagine OZ to be like. I think I finally came a long way to overcoming my fear of heights, as I climbed up a 70m vertical tree - took three go's, but go there in the end!

So what have I been doing with myself?? Well, lacking any kind of experience, and wholly devoid of any knowledge in the area, I set about working in a factory that builds combine harvesters the sizes of which are staggering.... I had the, hem hem, fortunate job of sandblasting, and then sanding all the metal components of the machines - and bear in mind that the whole machine, baring the wheels, are metal! I worked with a real true blue Ozzie biker - long, long beard, thick accent... had only left the state once of twice in his life... the other two are poms who have been here since the dawn of time, and who took great delight in turning everything, and I mean everything anyone said into an innuendo - we ended up calling the kitchen the blue room in the end.... It was good fun, ultimately, but the 5:30am starts were a b*****, and the heat was up to 42 degrees some time... which sucked when you are wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a face mask!

But, it was not all hard work - please see above re beaches and parks... There is also the lovely Swan river that I took a cruise on as well - which began with good intentions, was interrupted by free wine and ended up as 3 lost days - I do recall there being a beach party and a wet shirt contest being in there as well...Then there was the weekend trips to Bunbury and Donnybrook in the south - where we were able to wacth wild dolphins just as the sun went down..... I also did another dive course, which, hopefully, means I can be of assistance when someone has an accident out at sea or whilst diving.

And then Jess arrived a week ago and we zoomed up North to Exmouth, where we swam with the mysterious Whalesharks, about which little is known - they can grow up to 18m long, and are the world's longest fish. We also managed to fling in some dives as well... and now we are back in Perth and we are leaving for Alice Springs in a coupla hours....