....this was the beautiful end to my weekend....

this is a large bug that is currently living on the awning of my workplace... it's, ooohhh, 3 inches in length... weird bugs here.....

this is where i work... it's called Uptown Video and Wicked Ice Cream... it serves as an ice cream parlour, used book store, internet cafe and video rental store... i work on the video side, but often have to serve people ice cream because it's always hot and people always want ice cream......

this is where i live... yes that's correct, i live in a tent... we're goin' on three weeks now.... apparently i've scored a room in a house, living with this real estate agent guy... hopefully Friday or Saturday will be our moving day.... but for now... this tent is what we call home. Our hostel, Douggie's, rents out tents that have electricity, lights and beds on bed frames.... it's about seven feet tall... it's not as bad as some of you may think... the downside really is the fact that our tent is situated rather close to the bar/eating area of the hostel and as a result it is very, very loud at times.... and unfortunately the couple living in the neighbouring tent are completely insane....

...

and it was windy... but even though it was miserable out, it is always beautiful here...

very angry....

Port Douglas' 4 Mile Beach on a Rainy Day

this was my day off.... the ocean was angry.. no sun bathing for sam.

we sailed back to shore during sunset... we then went for the tall guy's birthday dinner at one of the many expensive restaurants in Port Douglas... it was delicious.....

... don't tell anyone... but i think i got a bit sea sick.... but just a little.....

the way back to Port was windy and the water was choppy... heaps of waves.. big waves.... waves that rocked the ship.... waves that hit the ship and splashed us all...

after snorkeling, we returned to the ship for tea, cake and fruit... delightful.

But the greatest moment of the entire snorkeling experience was the glory of swimming with a sea turtle... so, alexi went into shore because he was freezing after snorkeling for an hour or so... and i continued on my own, and had the great luck of spotting a turtle just sitting on top of some coral... i tried to get alexi's attention, but he was already on the beach.... so i swam around the turtle and examined it thoroughly for about 5 minutes and it just sat there, looking at me... finally Alexi began swimming back out to meet me... and just as he arrived and got a glimpse of the turtle, it decided to take off and start swimming... we followed it for about ten minutes as it seemed to fly gracefully through the water... then it swam up to the surface, just an arms length away, and popped its head out of the water for air.... greatest moment ever!

saw this one too....

and we saw lots of parrot fish.... they eat the coral... they have beaks...

so snorkeling is my favorite thing.... we saw this creature.... a type of stingray.....apparently it can kill you.... but it's cool looking... (i didn't take the picture though..)

the low isles..... the ship anchored about 250 meters offshore... we were served lunch and given snorkel gear... i got a lycra body suit... i burn easily you see, and it protected me from the sun while snorkeling for over 2 hours... the tide was high enough that we were able to swim over the top of all the ancient and developing coral all around the island... some of the coral we discovered was thousands of years old... huge and colorful, it moved underneath us....

life on a boat ain't bad at all...

We left the Port Douglas Marina at noon to sail about an hour and half out to sea. Alexi and I sat at the very front of the boat and let our feet dangle over the ocean... best seat on the boat...

the Shaolin

It was Mr. Hobbs' 27th birthday on Sunday July 17th... to celebrate, we booked a ride aboard the Shaolin... a traditional Chinese JUNK boat first built in 1965... the Shaolin had sailed around the world twice and now serves the tourists (and locals) of Port Douglas who wish to visit the Low Isles for some snorkelling to see the infamous Great Barrier Reef....

So, life in Port Douglas is all about work for me at the moment. Last Friday at 5pm i completed a 7-day stretch of Wicked ice cream scoops and dvd rentals... tiresome.... i work 9 to 5 each day or 8 to 5.... since i've been here i've had only 3 days off... i've only spent 1 day on the beautiful beach here... when i finish work, the sky is already pretty dark and the sun has almost disappeared.... but i absolutely neeeed the cash... they'll be plenty of time for the beach soon enough.....

we found pretty beaches again... this is a lookout on the long and extremely tiny road that hugs, twists and turns along the mountains and the coast line...

but the city of Cairns was lined with mud... very depressing.. and it's streets were lined with tourism.. they were no locals to be found... just extreme tourists... partying very hard and acting very scary... surely we could have found work... but i defintely couldn't have dealt with this scene.... we stayed two nights and then drove further north to the glorious little town of Port Douglas, my current location....

it rained throughout the majority of the drive... sometimes it rained on us.... othertimes it rained off in the distance... there was flooding all along the east coast.. we seemed to just miss it though... as we pulled out of towns, the water came in just hours later... we were lucky.... the shitty weather also prevented us from taking little trips to small and beautiful beach towns off the highway... we'll be taking a long time to drive back down... we passed far to many places i'd love to visit.

it was nice being the co-pilot/photographer...i got to take in the pretty sights.. that is, if i wasn't making sandwiches or feeding snacks to the endless pit otherwise known as the tall guy...

i made friends with the cowboy's horse... i called him and he just came over...

we drove into this area that was honestly like the wild west... the truck in the picture is transporting an outback cowboy to ... his home?... the road he took, you could actually see it go on forever into the distance...

'the hobbs' did all the driving... often i thought he would secretly murder me in my sleep for this... but i made it out alive...

we also slept at some pretty scary caravan parks along the way... especially when we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere after sundown... there were just scary caravan inhabitants really... that made large buses without wheel their homestead... a bit weird... but we probably looked very comical to them as well, what with the weird tiny van... we woke up real early each morning... sometimes we woke up before these little screaming birds would wake us.... sometimes we didn't... loud, loud birds..... at dawn and at dusk they get together and yell...

we drove for the great majority of every day... stopping only to eat... queensland has these stretches of highway where you are surrounded by absolutely nothing for over a hundred kms. desert and vast open space, some farm land... i spotted some dingos...kangaroos... not many people, just a few in these small pseudo towns that seem only to exist due to a single gas station...

my friends Steph and Rob generously lent us their camping stove... it made life my more comfortable on the road.... (i had to have tea).

leaving lennox head was difficult... but we headed for warmer weather and we'll be living back there soon enough... the destination Cairns... only 2000 or so kms north.... about 4 days of driving.....stopping to sleep for night number one we slept in the Ritz Carlton of Caravan Parks... they are very strange these places... they're cheap and there are showers, which is why we chose to become caravan-park-ers... but the people can be real weird... the diehard carvan park people... some live there all year and have mail boxes, others are just passing through and showing off their giant customized caravans from hell.... it's interesting... the little yellow van was pathetic next to the big guys... people chuckled and pointed at us... one guy said "good on ya," we were the only ones without a balcony.... sad.