100 Dives!

Two weekends ago we jumped on an invite from Jeroen and Raymonda to go for a dive at the bower which is right near home for us.  Although Chris had hit 100 dives on our last trip, I was a few behind and I was excited to do my 100th dive at our local beach.

100!

Conveniently they live in an apartment about 100 meters from the entry point so we suited up in their living room and walked down to the water in our gear.  

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Although we see people snorkeling and diving around here all the time we hadn't tried it ourselves and were very pleasantly surprised to find out that the diving was really good.  Also, with a maximum depth of about 6.5 meters it meant that we got cold before our air could run out so we had a nice long dive with a lot of great fish and sharks spotted.



Scorpion fish trying not to be seen



Cool shrimp in the foreground - tiny little box fish hanging out in the background

The little fish are using me for protection from the larger fish directly below me

Jeroen was feeding that large fish

We thought that lion fish were only in Thailand - who knew they were in our backyard!



see the video for some footage of this ray swimming around



Wobbiegong shark



Chris doing some fancy footwork to get out of the way of the shark



Don't put your hand down!

Hiding in the weeds

Master photographer Chris capturing the perfect picture of the wobbie

Sergeant Baker fish - I ate your relative for dinner a few months ago...

Lots of little fish

The dive crew post dive - that sun felt good!

We finished out the afternoon with a bbq at their place - overall an awesome way to do my 100th dive.  

One rainy weekend

Birdie beach - where are all of the nudists?

Last weekend we rounded everyone up for a camping trip before we moved too far into autumn (without all of the leaves dropping they don't call it fall here) when the weather and water won't be so nice.  Since we didn't have a long weekend, we found a place only about 1.5 hours north of Sydney to put up our tents.

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One of the amazing things about being in Sydney is that there are always a few different beaches to explore when you go camping, which was particularly reassuring in the case because part of Birdie beach is classified as "unclad".
Despite all of our concerns around who might be hanging out on the nudie part of the beach, the windy, cool and rainy weather ensured that everyone wanted to keep their clothes on. 

James helping by holding one chair down while everyone else sets up the shelter

In an effort to avoid a rain filled weekend we purchased a shelter on the way up, however luck was not with us and Saturday was raining off and on throughout the day.  Although we took some treks down to the beach and a few adventurous souls went into the water, most of the day was spent trying to find other ways to occupy ourselves.

Fueled by a few Guiness in honor of St. Patricks day, Kat and Webs pulled out the game of butthead.  For the unitinitated - this involves wearing a particularly silly looking cap while people throw balls at your head and try to get them to stick.

We set people up opposite each other and let them fly while laughing at how silly everyone looked.

Jeroen and Raymonda also decided that some driving exploration would be a good diversion.  Lucky for Jeroen, Ray was able to push him out of this ditch!

Hero!

On the way home we scouted out another deserted beach for a future camping trip, hopefully with blue skies and sunshine the next time.

Frazer Beach

As is always the case, the sunshine came out in full on the trip home, but still a good weekend away.

Visitor #4 loved it so much he came back for more

Chris's cousin Joe was able to trick his company into another trip down under and we were very excited to show him another great weekend in Sydney.  Since we did all of the touristy stuff like boating in the harbor and wandering around the city the last time that he was here, this time Manly put on their first ASP World Tour Surfing Competition so that he'd have something to do.


Chris and Joe debating their odds in the competition

Although the waves were quite a bit smaller than ideal, the juniors surfing that kicked off the weekend was still extremely impressive and we were lucky enough to see one young grommet score a 9 on a wave.  Added to that, after weeks of relentless rain we also got extremely lucky with some sunshine and only an afternoon thunderstorm which we sat out from the safety of the pub. 

We followed up our pub stop with some more time on the beach, where we saw the girl who's arm was bit off by a shark paddle out and catch a wave without any hassle. If she can do it with one arm, why is it so hard for us to catch them with two??

Are they trying to push me off of the ledge?

The first evening was wrapped up with some beers on the rocks, a yummy steak at Honolulu and some live music back at Murray's.

Shockingly, Sunday morning also dawned bright and sunny so Chris and Joe set out to catch dinner.  Although I'd ordered several kingfish, the obligatory thunderstorm came through before they were able to deliver.

Around 6 pm the clouds had passed and the waves had cleaned up so we brought some beers down to the rocks to watch the surfers.  With the world tour event in town there are a ton of amazing surfers around and there were a lot of great things happening out there.

Once the mosquitos had about sucked us dry we walked back up to the apartment to a spectacular sunset.

Unfortunately Joe is off traveling around to more of Australia - but just remember, this is how nice the sun looks rising over the ocean in the morning...

 You are welcome back any time.

Visitors 5 and 6: Oakley and Amy



 

Do NOT feed the animals!


 We were very excited to have our first NYC representatives, Oakley and Amy, visiting us for a quick 5 days down under as part of their tour of the region.  After a pretty rainy two weeks the weather played along and gave us some much needed sunshine for our camping trip.  We'd scouted out Cave Beach a few weekends before and were happy to show them how great camping in Australia can be.



About to step on their first deserted Australian beach

Unfortunately along with the sunshine came some pretty impressive winds so we decided that instead of getting sandblasted we'd go back to the main beach.


Bherwerre Beach

 


Cave Beach


After some relaxing time on the beach some storm clouds rolled in and we hid under the tarp while a quick storm passed leaving us with a rainbow.


Amy was determined to get the perfect kangaroo picture and Chris was happy to help after assuring us that the signs asking you not to feed the animals only apply if you aren't taking a picture.


Anything for the picture

  

You looking at me?



The next morning was sunny again but the wind was still blasting so we went in search of some adventure elsewhere in the park.

Who needs a fence?

Miles and miles of untouched coastline



How close is too close?

The ruins of the old light house

Turns out that this lighthouse was built in the wrong spot and was full of nothing but issues and tragedy to the point where they actually had to blow up this lighthouse once they built another one.  The sign for this was one of the funniest ones that I've ever seen with a whole section on "woe, disaster and misery".

The new light house is on the headlands behind us

We decided to escape this cursed place and check out another beach that would hopefully be sheltered from the wind.  Steemer Beach turned out to be the perfect solution.  We walked about 45 minutes through the bush to stumble on this gem of a beach.

That 300 meters straight down to the beach was a good deterance from other people

All ours!

A far cry from NYC





 After an awesome afternoon on the beach topped off by some ice cream we headed back to the campsite to judge if s'mores with plain chocolate are better than those with a resees peanut butter cup (more testing will be required).  The s'mores were that much tastier with the fresh graham crackers that they had carried through three countries and customs inspections like heros.

Relaxing as hard as possible

The following morning we had blue skys and sunshine and finally a break in the wind.  We took advantage of that and spent some time in the water catching waves before heading back to Sydney.



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The boys enjoying the water



Back in Manly we enjoyed a beer on the rocks overlooking the beach before meeting up with our friends to try our hardest to convince Oakley and Amy that they should stay forever over a few beers at Wharf Bar.

Saturday morning the weather gods decided to smite us a bit and instead of a sunny day of boating on the harbor we woke up to some rain.  Instead of getting soaked all day we decided to ditch the boat and head into the city on the ferry to check out some of the sights.

  

 



  



 Once we'd exhausted the tourist sights we went home to host a farwell bbq.  Unfortunately despite our best efforts Oakley and Amy decided that they did in fact want to continue their trip onwards to New Zealand and Thahiti so we begrudgingly brought them back to the airport on Sunday morning.  Hopefully now they are shivering in winter and wishing that they were back in beautiful Australia in summer time!