I spent my second to last day in Perth back on Rottnest Island (home to our cycling exploits of Boxing day). Luckily, this time it wasn't 44degrees!!! I went out on a dive boat for the day.
The divemaster buddyed me up with a really nice Irish girl (missed out on buddying the fit Australian - think the female dive instructor already had her eyes on him!!! haha!) Anyway, it was great... although two problems presented themselves - the instructor was happy just to give us a briefing and let us head off by ourselves... which is great, but the first time I'd done that which was a little nerve wracking!! Secondly, my partner only had 3 more dives under her belt than me - so wasn't terribly confident either!!! That in itself isn't an issue - we've both dived recently, know what we're doing, if we surface and need help the boat skipper would rescue us - fine. The problem lies when you get into the water, head off looking at your coral and fish, concentrating on all your diving stuff - and suddenly think - WHEN was the last time I used a compass?!? Hmmm... well, for me, I knew fine well that my last compass use was up some mountain in Snowdonia for Gold Duke of Edinburgh in high school... and we became pretty friendly with the mountain rescue team that night!!! ARGHH!!! (For the record - that was the pants weather, my orienteering used to be pretty good!!!) But I really didn't have much of a clue 15meters below water!!!
As i'm sure you realise from the fact that I lived to tell the tale - we found the boat (but had a bit of a swim!!!), and on our afternoon dive - which was great - we formed a more logical approach to our underwater exploring!!!
Today was spent (somehow without hangover despite being up til 2am playing Nintendo and table tennis!) back on Penguin Island - this time, we decided to kayak out there and explore the island from the water!!! It was great fun - I've sea-kayaked before but generally always with someone stronger than me in the back to enable me to cheat a little!!! This time we were equal weaklings... but actually managed fine (right up until 2minutes before we had to return the kayak when suddenly the current decided it would be funny to insist on pushing us away from our intended landing point to ensure we had to lug a very heavy kayak back up the beach at the end!!!) All good fun!!! We then headed off to Kings Park back in Perth for a wander before I finished my packing!!!
Anyway, I'm off to Alice Springs tomorrow, for a few days roughing it - sleeping out in the bush in the open air (with all the snakes!!! errr...) on my way to Ayres Rock... gonna be interesting!!!
