Oz Snow Ski Trip - Journey

Ski Time!! After a hard weeks work it was time to hit the mountains and get some ski time in! The bus to the Ski Resort was the princely sum of 6 hours away!! We boarded the bus at central and loaded our bags on it the guy in charge if the bus told everyone it was a "Dry Bus" and anyone who wanted to drink they could get on the other bus....I doubt you'd find a group quicker than us to jump out of our seats! We left the funeral bus and hopped on the 'party' bus, the rep (doggie) told us we'd be stopping at the bottle shop (off licence) in 5 minutes & I reckon the whole coach but the bottle shops owners kids through college! The bus "toilet" was hilarious! It was basically a funnel with a tube attached to it out the bus door :D. We arrived to the resort around 2am, collected our gear and ski bits and after the bus trip of debauchery we were fit for the bed!

- (Photos © Ciaran Doherty 2009)

The Queens Birthday

LOL Forgot to mention we had the Queens Birthday off today.....Disgraceful!!

Nelsons Bay & The Road home...........

After checking out of our hotel we decided to take a scenic drive of Nelsons bay, we took a drive up the coast line of port stephens and pulled in where some pelicans (I think thats what they are!) were hanging around where the fishers gut the fish. We then took a trip up to the lighthouse and the views were tropical!

We decided to hit the road and see some stuff on the way home we pulled into the 'National Ray & Shark Centre' on the way home and had a look in side the place didn't look up to much, infact it seemed to be a barn with a few tanks here and there, the brochure was a tad misleading with its pricing also so we skipped. On the way home we decided to take a trip through Newcastle to check a few bits...the place is an absolute dive, very run down, it reminded me off Detroit city in Robocop or a bad suburb of Dublin! (Not going on a rant here as the good outweights the bad here in Oz!).

The drive home was fine we went across a different bridge (ANZAC Bridge) and the GPS accidentely took us down the Bus only slip road, no harm done...but you never know whats in the post!

Nelsons Bay Day 2 (After the Scuba!)

Well after the Scuba we decided to get a bit of shut eye after the early morning start! We decided to do some mini-golf ,we headed to 'Tobogan Park' some random place with a tobogan shootdown a hill! The mini-golf itself was horizontaly challenged every ball you hit would slope to one side! After the 'soil creep' mini-golf Tina saw some craftsection and wanted to paint something! As you can see from the picture mine was the snoopy 'effort' :D...

My Snoopy clay painting & Tina's Ice Age super duper clay painting.

We headed back to the hotel and after a bottle of wine we headed for some much needed Thai and off to the local pub (complete with junkie lights in the toilets)....

Discover Scuba

We surface at 6am and arrived at feet first dive for 7am, we got into the wetsuits (not easy) and headed to the shore for our first dive. The equipment was very heavy on land but not so noticeable in the water due to its buoyancy. The dive was pretty scary I have to say there's something very sureal about being under the water for that length of time my heart was racing when I was first down there. We done a 12metre dive and it was beautiful under there loads of coral and sea life we even saw a stingray but the stupid Kodak waterproof camera didn't capture anything...grrrrrrrrr. Our instructor told us we done pretty well considering it was our first ever dive and alot of place you have to do the dive in the swimming pool before hand.

Kudos to Sam Long at http://www.feetfirstdive.com.au/ for taking us out and showing us the ropes I'm sure we left an everlasting impression on him!!

Nelsons Bay..Day 1ish!

We got up and took the car out to head to the Scuba Lesson we punched in the GPS the address of 'Feet First Dive' and it was literally 2 seconds away so we had to throw the car back into the carpark! So we went in for the procedures and the legal red tape before the dive! Our instructor Sam Long went through the various steps: Equipment: How to use your regulator, What to do if you mouth piece falls out, water in your mask, various call / hand signals,etc....there certainly is alot involved in Scuba diving..

After that was over (an hour or so) we went to the town and had a look around it was a nice spot plenty going. The marina was lovely and reminded us somewhat of 'San Fran' .There was a country music festival so the place was pretty busy

We went for a meal in 'Hogs Breath' I'd the steak 400grm (14.1 Oz in our money..I didn't have breakfast :) ) and Tina has the ribs the meat was superb and specially prepared for 18hours. As we were doing the scuba at 7am the next morning it was by no means a late night!

The Road to Nelson Bay.....

Its the Bank Holiday weekend here so we decided to head to Nelson Bay for the long weekend (and my Birthday!!) . I drove across the harbour bridge which (see picture below I took in March of the Bridge), its some structure with 6 lanes and some on it! The drive was a 200km one it didn't take us to long with the biggest delay getting out of the city. The usual Maccers pitstop and after the drive it was a bottle of wine, a film and a bit of kip!!

Driving across the Harbour Bridge

Picture of the harbour bridge taken in March