Feels like we're in Cairns

[Not to confuse people actually paying attention, but this post was written a few months ago, but just found it unpublished, so have just published it!]

AND thinking about it and my previous 42 post. If I had published this post when it was written, then I wouldn't have had 42 posts for last year, so seems the universal power must be in control here ;o)

Yup, there must have been something in that cereal this morning!

The actual post will seem pretty boring after all this, but onwards anyway....

Another storm forecast for today and had some rain and bit of thunder earlier.... then about 30 mins ago the lightning started. So like any sad, photographic lunatic I'm grabbing my camera and tripod (sorely under used lately) to head outside and try and capture some lightning shots.

It was mostly sheet lightning in the clouds, so really just lit up the area making the 9.30 dark look like early evening nearly (with the help of some long exposure times)

Then the rain started to come over so I headed inside....and not a moment too soon as it erupted like a classic  "Cairns tropical storm" - you were wondering where the title was from....go on admit it!

Massive winds and LOTS of rain, very cool, because I'm indoors in the dry of course. Tried to get a shot of the rain coming off the veranda (with the help of the green garden light). But as you can see, should have used the tripod again and wouldn't normally put a photo up of this quality, but it's the affect we're after

If you really want get a sense of it you can check out my "video" on my youtube channel. Which is in reality only audio as it was too dark, but is some classic phil rambling to amuse you....

I "sea" horses

OK, so not one of my best titles. Was probably trying too hard and took some misguided inspiration from the new Sherlock Holmes series, which is really good IMHO.

Anyway, back to the plot. I decided to join up with the club to dive the Rockingham Wreck Trail as I hadn't done that site yet although heard a lot about it. It is effectively 5 or 6 small wrecks including 2 Cessna planes with a bunch of ropes connecting them to help with navigation and the fact that it is an easy shore dive, so used for a lot of training. The visibility is generally bad and on the day it was blowing about 15kts, which looked like this:

But as you might have guessed there was a good reason for me doing this dive and it is all about "seahorses", which although I've seen one or two before I have never seen many on one dive. So armed with the camera and some skepticism from what I heard and the site (just stuck in the middle of a sandy bay), we took the plunge.

Well wasn't I made a fool of, because as soon as we descended and followed the rope out to the deep wreck (about 17m) we started seeing the little blighters! Everywhere..... They were clinging to the rope, swimming next to it and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Yeha, there she(he?) goes

Relying mostly on their very good camouflage and presumably unappetising look, they don't move very fast so made some willing photo models. Could have taken a lot more, but my buddy was not a photo geek so didn't want to drive him too mad, especially as I managed to do that later when I realised my car key holder we took diving had leaked......not so bad for me as I take the old car with old school key, but he had a new remote key which probably got fried!! Sorry Gregg.

Some were bright orange, like this. Same species though, I think.

More horses of the sea on picasa album.

A real live wild praying mantis

Who'd a thunk it! Getting ready to go to work and on our back screen door was a praying mantis, how cool!!!!! I'd never seen one outside of a zoo type place before, so grabbing the trusty camera, macro lens and gorilla pod thingy we had a little photo shoot.

Then a couple of days later I saw a tiny bug running round on my BBQ, then looking more closely it was actually a tiny baby praying mantis, I kid you not! Crazy indeed :)

Glynn's 40th weekend and Gnomesville

GT decided to get away for his Big 40, so we headed down to Bunbury for our second camping weekend on the trot.

We squeezed Marc in with us and headed down to Friday after work, which meant that we didn't get down there until around 7, so had a few beers to celebrate the day.

Next day we headed out towards Wellington Dam and on the way we called into the world famous Gnomesville. A most bizarre piece of woodland at the side of a roundabout, definitely worth an hour or so to wander round and see some very interesting gnomes and friends :) And Glynn donated his frog.

Not a gnome, but good to photo





The new additions to Gnomesville

Then after that little interlude we headed onto the Dam, which was surprisingly venting a lot of water.

And as it was Glynn's weekend one of the major plans was to find some off-roading tracks, although the corrugated track to get to here was nearly as bad!

And to top off the day we found some water to play in, even if it was the river and VERY cold.

Do I really want to go in there, I just saw the shock on Ollie's face as he went in...

But it is water, so I have to...don't forget to let go!

More photos on picasa (of course).

Australia Day weekend in Augusta

After getting the Friday off after Australia Day, as unlike other public holidays it is always on the actual day, Thursday this year. We booked into a camp site in Augusta because it was an area we hadn't explored much, except for a day trip with Bob and Louise a few years ago.

It wasn't a bad drive, only about 4 hours and only had to stop once so we got down there early afternoon and got setup.

Janice relaxing in the shade

One of the main reasons of getting away, other than we hadn't been camping in ages, was to escape the crazy heatwave hitting Perth. 4 or 5 days of 37-40 degrees was not pleasant, especially when you're pregnant! So it was better, being around 10 degrees cooler down there it was still hot and humid (bizarrely), so we still went searching some shade whenever we could.

Are we done yet....

After attempting a walk along the cliffs (as we would normally do), ahem! One of us said "just get me to the water"..... so this

The cliff walker

Went to this....

Happy because I'm cool now!

And of course being a hyperactive loon I had to go off snorkeling and playing with new underwater camera and was pleased to get my first good "over-under water shot".

Being a bit further south than usual we decided to visit "Jewel Cave", which was definitely better than Lake Cave and about on par with the Ngili caves up near Yallingup. We got to explore through a few different caverns and apparently this cave has the worlds most weird Helictites (sideways and upwards growing stalactites).

And to prove I was actually there for the weekend :)

A whole lot more photos up on picasa

Gadget time

After thinking, and saying several times, what is the point of an iPad, I am now in the position to make a real call on that. Being a part of the Emergency Management Team in work puts us theoretically on call for approx one week in every six. It is unlikely we will get called as it is only if there is a REAL BIG disaster and as work is very focused on avoiding that, then the odds are low. Anyway, we don't get any extra pay for that BUT we were called into a meeting early on this week for a thank you lunch and a 'gift'. Which turned out to be a an iPad2 for everyone.... Soooo, here I am with my new gadget writing this post and trying various other tricks with it to see where it will be useful, over the laptop or smartphone!

Pick a gadget, any gadget...

And just to add some more geekness to it I had to test out tethering it to my phone, using my phone as a wireless hub, which is working very well. So instead of buying a data plan just for this I can use the wireless at home, but then my phone when on the go! Assuming I actually get a decent signal with Vodafone of course, although they are getting better.

So will see how it goes over the next few months...Although just found one limitation with the safari browser, as it won't let me upload an image to post, only link to a URL. So no images for this post as planned.