Our Great Northern Adventure

 

For the last two days, Tanya and I have been touring around Darwin and Kakadu National Park, sleeping in our Wicked Outback 4x4 Campervan. Today, after checking out the boats at the Beer Can Regatta, we'll start our 2000km 3076km journey, going down to Katherine Gorge, Devil's Marbles, the MacDonnell Ranges, King's Canyon, and Uluru before heading to Alice Springs for our flight home.

It's been great so far, though some of our off-roading in the park was turned back by a forest fire (above).

Dwarf Minke Whales

Dwarf Minke Whales from Pat Morin on Vimeo.

As promised, here is the video from our dive trip with the Dwarf Minke Whales that the onboard video pro made. Its a bit long (30+ minutes) so if you want to see the whales they start around 9 minutes.

The Day the Music Died

I'll always remember where I was when I heard Michael Jackson died; snorkelling and diving with Minke Whales on the Great Barrier Reef. Last weekend Tanya and I flew north to Cairns where we hopped on board the Spoilsport for 3 days of diving and snorkelling with Minke whales. The trip finished off with a low-level flight back to Cairns in an 8-seater Cessna operated by Hinterland Aviation.

Here are some pictures. There will probably be a video later.

Sydney Winter Festival

Tonight we went to the Sydney Winter Festival. They have an outdoor ice rink that costs only $20 to skate on, but tickets were sold out weeks ago. They also have a range of traditional winter foods from all over the world. I was promised poutine, but couldn't find any.

Here are a handful of pictures.

Taronga Zoo

This weekend we went to the Taronga Zoo where we had a chance to see the world's only captive (rescued) leopard seals, a red panda, a pygmy hippo, and giraffes against the Sydney Harbour skyline. We also went for a dive at Shark Point where a cuttlefish tried to mate with me.

Here are some pictures at the zoo and diving.

South Australia

We've recently returned from our trip to South Australia. While there, we cage dove with great white sharks, snorkelled with sea lions, dove with leafy sea dragons and watched the mating rituals of the giant Australian cuttlefish and that was just in the first four days! After that we headed to the Flinders Ranges for some hiking where we climbed to St. Mary's peak - the highest peak in the ranges. After a few days of hiking we headed south to Kangaroo Island where we did a bit of diving and watched the New Zealand fur seals and sea lions.

Here are some pictures.

Cape Solander to Cronulla

Last Sunday we decided to take a hike from Cape Solander to Cronulla. It's a nice hike with some good views of the ocean. On the way back 5 or 6 humpback whales were passing Cape Solander, but they were hard to make out without binoculars.

Here are a few pictures.