Sydney

I arrived in sydney hungover (standard) and headed straight up to kings cross, cos thats the only place ive ever heard of there, found a hostel very easily,there is loads, in my room was an english guy and an aussie, i linked up with the aussie and we just couldnt stop getting pissed all the time, a good laugh, we went to bondi beach and there was a shark alert while we were there, it didnt stop all the nutty surfers, must be why they get bitten all the time.

On the third day i was wandering back from a storming brekfast and i ran into damian, the guy i met in peru and also he was the one that sorted out the apartment in brazil, small world, i had no idea he would be there, he had just arrived that morning and was only staying one night, so without wasting another minute, we went on a session, as we meandered around town and got progressivly more pissed, we went up a mega tall building, and came accros this restaurant with the most tremendous city view i have ever seen, if you are ever in sydney and want to go for a posh lunch, i fully recommend the orbit on floor 47 of australia house, the food looked great too,not that we ate, we just hung around looking drunk and dubious

The Sydney Opera house

Eventually we ended up at sydney opera house where we attempted to cause havoc by playing with the tannoys and looking around fire exits trying to fin a way in, i was keen to see a show and as i was hanging around one of the entrances a lady approached me and offered me a ticket beacause she could not go

I gratefully accepted and enjoyed the sydney symphony play sibelius symphony no.5 from row 4, fantastic!, at the interval i drank free champagne and decided i wiould try to get into the ballet next door, so i went over and slipped in at their interval, and sat down, it was a very enjoyable version of the merry widow, meanwhile outside, my mates were attempting to climb the outside of the opera house!

Cairns

as soon as i arrived i went straight to one of the many tourist shops and booked myself on the rum runner to go straight off diving, within two hours of landing i was cruising out into the coral sea for a 4 day dive extravagansa, the journey out was horrendous, 2 metre swell, lots of people, even the cook, were sick, but i managed to survive without hurling and was content to be bashed around in my bunk at the front of the boat, sometimes waking to find myself a foot in the air as the boat crashed down.

When we arrived in the morning, 240kms from shore it was blue skys and calm seas, i was buddied up with this swiss guy yves who was a very good diver, is was very educational for me as he was so calm and moved so slowly in the water, i shared his 100th dive with him, we stayed under for 67 mins, twice as long as others, the slow breathing kings, the deep dive was excellent, we drifted at 40m down along a wall of coral that went dowm 1000m it was quite scary looking down, during this one we saw  a hammerhead shark, very rare, i once saw one in rangiora, tahiti, and that was lucky,its really freaky cos if you tense your musles the shark can sence it and swims towards you, scarey

The shark feed

This is what we came for, during the day 40 or more sharks had gathered near the boat, they knew what was coming, they had a dusbin full of reef fish skeletons from restaurants in cairns, and occasionally chucked one over, at one point one of the crew hoisted a shark out of the water and grabbed it tight for us to touch, what a nutter. When it was time we all sat in a semi circle on the floor of the ocean, only about 10m down, spaced so the sharks could swim between us, and they hung the food over the side, there was loads of them, white tips, grey whalers, silver tips and a beutiful nurse shark that was huge, it was the noise that i'll never forget, like a low booming of them all fighting together to get the food, there is some nice piccies on the next page, check it out, well im off to china next, so i better go !