Paul's Page

Hello, I’m sorry it has been another long while since I posted anything here but I’ve been a little busy. Mostly I have been taking about 4 weeks off since leaving Shanghai China and it has been great. I guess I shouldn’t really say that I was taking it off rather I have been off is probably more accurate. Because Quidam was on a boat between Shanghai and Mexico there was really nothing for me to do. I could have spent a large amount of this time off in the US visiting friends and all that kind of thing but because of tax reasons it was more beneficial for me to stay out of the US for that time.

I’ll explain: as someone who works outside of the continental United State for the majority of the year and earns my income from Foreign companies the US government says that I can get a tax break. That tax break is this: NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX on the first $80K I earn. The catch is that I can’t physically be in the US for more than 35 days in a calendar year and I qualify for this more accurately described tax exemption. So if I had come back to the US for these 4 weeks and because I had spent some time already in the US for my Canadian fishing vacation I would have gone over that 35 days and therefore would have owed the US government taxes on all the money I have earned so far this year but paid nothing to them so they would have been wanting a lot of money from me.

So I have been on holidays for the last 4 weeks. When I left Shanghai after tear down I headed with three friends Neil, Rob and Andrew to the Philippine island of Cebu. We landed first in Manila from Shanghai and then transfered to a smaller plane which took us to Cebu city, actually on the island of Cebu. We arrived in Cebu city about 10:30 or so and then we had about a two hour van ride to the actual place we were staying on the other side of the island in the town of Moalboal. We awoke in the morning to a nice breakfast and a trip on a little dive boat to one of the local dive sites. After that dive we came back and had a snack and a little rest before heading out for the next dive of the day. After that afternoon dive we had lunch and then we did a night dive after which we had dinner. This is how it went for about 5 days On the 6th day we had to stay out of the water because we were flying the next day so we rented little scooters and drove for a while to see a waterfall and swim in the pool underneath it. It was pretty hard life for sure. I’m hoping to put pictures up from that trip soon I’m still sorting through them.

After the Philippines I headed up through Kuala Lampur on my way to Adelaide Australia. It was an overnight flight and a long one at that so I arrived at something like 6:30am there. I collected my luggage and jumped into a rental car. Of course because I was in Australia and a lot tired I first tried to get into the driver’s seat to drive the car away but it didn’t take long to realize there was no steering wheel there, I think I covered it well by placing my bag on the seat and walking around to the correct side I went to Adelaide to visit a friend who I knew, and dated for a short while, while Quidam was in Adelaide a couple years ago and I wanted to go diving there again, go figure. So I arrived at my friend’s house and situated myself in her guest bedroom and pretty much took it very easy for the next couple of days. It wasn’t so terrible either especially since she had a 6 month old baby boy that I got to play with and then give back when he had smelly diapers or needed to be fed Can I just say how much I like being uncle Paul. About the diving, when I was in Adelaide the last time a friend of mine, Ruby, and I paid a lot of money to go see this animal/fish called the Leafy Seadragon. They are truly and amazingly beautiful animal and we had seen cousins of this in Melbourne called the weedy seadragon. Well Ruby and I made the trip down south of Adelaide and did two dives and didn’t see a single stinking one of them So I was going back to try for a second time. This time my friend Rob, who I work with and certified as a diver, were hopefully going to find this bugger. Well we all met at the dive shop, myself, Rob and Robert Rath and piled into Robert’s car and headed down south. Well part way down we hear this disturbing scraping sound from one of the tires so we pulled over to discover that there was nail in one of the tires Somehow and I really don’t know how I remembered that there was Goodyear tire place a couple of Kilometers back so we headed off to get the tire fixed. Unfortunately the tire wasn’t supposed to be repairable because it was right in the corner of the tread and side wall but the great guy there patched us up so we could get there and back and have the tired fixed some other time when the car wasn’t fully of scuba gear. The first place we went to, Rapid Bay Jetty, was somewhere I had dove on the previous Leafy Seadragon quest but we ended up not staying there as the water was very cloudy and the surf that was coming in was only making things worse. So we headed over to Victor harbor to a place called “the Bluff” and got into the amazingly cold water. The water was actually 57 degrees and let me tell you when we got in we truly knew we weren’t in the Philippines any more. However, after a short surface swim we ducked down under the water and went over a little rock and there low and behold was a Leafy Seadragon I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I took a bunch of pictures and could have happily ended the dive right then an there but we pushed on and saw another NINE, yeah that was NINE, of these awesome animals. We ran into a couple of seals that were kind of lounging around and after about an hour in the water I was kind of turning blue so we got out of the water for a quick lunch at a local bakery. I have sorted through a lot of the pictures from this dive already and I will put some of them up on my site but I have to admit that I didn’t take all of the pictures that you will see. Because my camera was in for service in Shanghai Robert actually allowed me to use his camera for the dive, of which I used for about half of it, before I handed it back to him so I could keep my hand warm and just enjoy the dive. so the pictures you will see will have to be credited to him as well. After the second dive that day we headed back up to Adelaide and I ended the day with a nice meal with my friend. After relaxing in Adelaide for several days and trying to get around to see a bunch of things I headed off to Brisbane.

The reason I went to Brisbane was because when Quidam was there I ended up taking a two week holiday back to the US during that city and I really didn’t get to see a whole lot so I wanted to go back to see a little more. I stayed at one of our artist’s parent’s house while I was in Brisbane and it was just great. I even got a home cooked dinner out of it which of course is always GREAT. While I was there I kind of did a couple of things around the city and relaxed, I went to an arboretum of sort and to a lookout point above the arboretum on one day. On another I met a friend from a previous dive trip who I only casually knew from the trip but we had a nice night of some drinks and a walk around the town at night. The big things that I did in Brisbane were I went to Australia zoo which was awesome, and I also went to Fraser Island which was another amazing trip. On my trip to the Australia zoo I decided to rent a car and drive up to the zoo and see a couple of things along the way to the zoo. This meant I wasn’t going to be just taking the highway but rather some of the back roads so I could see some scenery and relax. Well I was driving along and I came to a road that intersected the one I was driving on and I just happened to catch the name of the road as something something ridge road. I thought well I’m driving along the bottom of some mountains, that could be cool. So I turned around and drove down this road. After short bit of driving past some cattle fields and the like the road started going vertical. Well I switched back and forth for probably the better part of an hour. Stopping once in a while to look out at the forest and listen to the birds. Well eventually I crested the mountain and my GPS kind of looked like it was telling me that I was making a loop back to the main road I had originally came from so I continued on. It was some really nice country, nice rolling hills, cattle fields and some pretty nice houses actually. Well after about another 30-45 minutes the road turned to gravel. Well should I push on or turn back??? Of course I’m in a rental I’ll push on. So I took this one road for a while and it wasn’t too bad but then it started to get a little more rough and less gravely and more muddy. So I tried to push along a little farther but when I had just passed the crew clearing forest and the road was looking decidedly like I would need some of the heavy foresting equipment to tow me out I decided to turn around. So after a couple of bottom scraping jolts and quick dashes through the mud so I didn’t get stuck eventually I got back on the better gravel road. This time I took the road the other direction and drove on it until again I would have needed heavy foresting equipment to tow me out if I went any further (except this time there was no equipment around). So I ended up having to backtrack all the way to where I first turned off that main road. Well this meant all the time I had alloted to see the glass mountains we eaten up and I had to rush over to the Australia zoo in order to have a decent amount of time there to walk around and take pictures.

I don’t know how much any of you know about the Australia zoo but it is the zoo that was found by Steve Irwin’s grandparents and arguably Steve Irwin got the zoo to it’s current popularity by his fun TV show the Crocodile Hunter. I have always like the show and became a fan of Steve’s work. Yeah he was a little crazy but he truly cared about the environment and the wildlife that was in it. I really was pretty crushed to hear about his death by a stingray that one day a while ago. This is an animal I have seen in the wild a 100 times and never had any incident with. I think Steve just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time but because he was a TV personality his death got a lot of publicity some good and some bad. Any way, going to the zoo that he made so popular was a real treat for me and I really loved my time there. I went to the Crocoseum and saw the croc show. I wish I had sat in a different seat because I would have liked to have gotten some better pictures but still it was fun. The zoo itself was really nice and I actually learned quite a few things about crocodiles. Like if you see signs that say crocodiles present, DON’T GO NEAR THE WATER!!! These animals are amazing, at one feeding they showed us how stealthy these animals are and let me tell you stay the “blank” away from the water when they are known to be present. This 8-9 foot crocodile came flying up out of the water at lighting speed. The only reason the guy survived was because this animal was “tamed” and instead of sitting just under the water where there is no sign of the animal he was floating with his eyes and mouth above it. It was truly an amazing demonstration. So what else did I see. I saw some pretty cool birds. I saw some wombats in a big open area just eating some grass. I saw a couple of wombats be walked around on leashes. I pet quite a few kangaroos and wallabies. I saw some Tasmanian devils and a lot of other cool Australian animals. All in all it was a great afternoon. I would have stayed at the zoo until the kicked me out but as it was I needed to check in at a hotel that was about an hour’s drive away and time was getting thin so I had to leave, but not before I bought some souvenirs of course

So after the zoo I drove up to the small town of Noosa where I was to spend the night and then the next morning get on a 4WD tour bus off to the world’s largest sand island, Fraser Island. But before that I wanted to catch the sunset and see the ocean at the Noosa heads. So I pretty much checked in at the motel, threw my stuff down and raced out the door with my camera gear. Well I had a nice evening walk through a kind fo scrub brushy forest and eventually made it to a point where I could hear the ocean and then I saw a path that said “to the beach” so I took off in that direction. I walked on the beach for a while up around the heads and then eventually got back onto land and walked a little way to a good spot where I could see the sun set. It was a nice sunset but not the greatest but I still appreciated it. I guess at this point that I should mention that in my haste to get out of the door I didn’t grab any sort of flashlight or my GPS. So now it is getting rather dark, as often happens after sunset, and I’m kind of a ways away from my motel. So I started walking briskly through the forest through which came the to get to the beach (don’t worry mom I was on a paved path) but I didn’t really have a great idea of where I was or which way to go. Thankfully after not too long of a walk I ended up seeing light from town so I started towards those. Once I got into town I was feeling a little hungry and I happened across a Mexican restaurant so I figured I’d give it a try. Well it actually turned out to be a pretty good Mexican place in the middle of nowhere Australia, I was impressed.

The next morning I woke up early and waited for a little bus to come pick me up to take me the worlds largest sand island, Fraser Island. It was a bigger bus than I had first thought it was going to be and it drove us about an hour to an hour and half to a gas station and bakery closer to the launching point. There we picked up a couple of more passengers and got into an even bigger bus, but this bus was special. It has 4 Wheel drive about 40″ diameter wheels, it was quite impressive. After we all packed up we started out towards the ferry landing. When we got closer all of the sudden the bus drive slowed down, threw it into 4WD and we were driving through the sand. I have to say it is quite and experience. After the short jaunt through the sand we were onto the ferry and steaming across about a mile worth of water to Fraser Island. When we arrived onto the island itself we unfortunately had to take the inland road because it was high tide and the bus wouldn’t have fit between the ocean and the forest. So we endured a fairly bumpy road for quite a while until we broke out onto the beach for a short distance before stopping for morning tea. After a short lit stay there we boarded back onto the bus and headed down the beach, the beach proper this time and it was quite amazing. Along we way we say a couple of resident dingos, plenty of ocean and some exciting 4 wheeling. After a while we cut back up into the center of the island where we headed for a lake that was formed on top of this island it was it was crystal clear, cold, and refreshing. After the lake we headed to a board walk where we walked through the forest for a little while and then back onto the bus and back to the place where we had morning tea for some lunch. after lunch, since I had only signed up for the 1 day tour, we cruised down the beach again towards the ferry landing. This time we didn’t have to cut into the island and we had a very nice scenic drive down to where we met the ferry again and then it was back to my hotel to pick up my car and head back down to Brisbane.

The next morning I headed back to the airport for my next leg of my trip up to the small town of Cairns and then I was booked on a bus to take me to a smaller town called Port Douglas where I was to get aboard my Liveaboard boat that was going to take me out to the Outer Great Barrier Reef for a week. I got to town and met a couple of my shipmates and we walked around town a little because we were early. After that we boarded the boat and steamed out of the bay.

This post is already way too long so I’m going to throw it up and try and write a second one soon.