tomandzoe.com - live from the northside

It’s been about 10 days since I last posted, which is a long time if you’re sitting in an office in Sydney, but a flash in the Tropics. Especially when there’s an abundance of work, including stuff in the field, and partying to get done. Oh, my!

That’s right, I’ve just finished my latest round of sampling. It’s the dry season sample, so it’s just as well that I’ve just finished it because it’s going to start raining any moment now… any moment…. The cane farmers around the Mulgrave River are in their usual fine form, bulldozing new boat ramps and pulling trees out of the river to mill up. They were also wondering why I didn’t have cute chicks with me this time around. I told them that I could only find ‘ugly dudes’; I’m still wondering myself. One of the farmers has started to quarry the sand from one of the in-channel points. But, unlike his thoughtful neighbours, has neglected to install a boat ramp. This makes launching the boat a real PITA because there’s now a large sandy mound to get over (nobody likes those).

In other news Zoe and I have been attending our recommended weekly intake of parties. Kiki and Mieke (spelling?) had a graduation party over at Kiki’s on the weekend. There was an abundance of lime, sugar, ice and white-rum, which are all old friends, along with an abundance of food, interesting characters and music (esp. German remixes of old favourites!).

That was on Saturday night, but I was sooo tired from going diving all day that I only lasted ’till about 1am. I went for a drift dive on Maggie Island (from Geoffery’s Bay around to Alma Bay). Because of the tides, atmospheric conditions and the prevailing winds (as Owl from Whinnie the Pooh says) we were not able to make it all the way and our ‘drift’ turned into an annoying surface swim.

We’re heading over again tonight to do a night dive on the wreck of the Moltke (a German boat scuttled to provide protection for an old jetty). It should be pretty cool! The whole aim of going over tonight is to try to witness the mass coral spawing which occurs in inshore areas just after the full moon.

I’ll leave you with a photo of the most dominant old geez that I’ve ever seen. Check out the trailer with the bread in it. He also had a packet of large fries from Maccas in the front basket that he was eating as he was going along. Hilarious. I wonder if he went through the drive through?

I just noticed that the wreck where we’re going diving tonight is off the point seen in the background of the ‘old geez photo’.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2004 at 11:54 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.