How To Hold a Crocodile

...that was the title of a book we had at home when I was a child. Well, today I got to do as its title suggests; to hold a crocodile. It was on a nature tour here on Magnetic Island. The croc was only a couple of years old, and was less than two foot long. Also, its mouth was taped shut (humanely, I promise) so that it could not bite our faces off. Apparently the correct technique is to grip lightly around the neck and base of the tail.

We also had a python of some description draped around our necks, and Emily and I paid the $14 extra each so that we could have our photo taken holding a Koala. This turned out to be the most hazardous of all the activities, on account of their large claws and mean temper. Lots of photos were taken, but of course I don't have the facilitied to upload them at present. Dang.

So far we've driven about 1100km down the East coast of Australia, and are probably about 1/3 of our way to Sydney. The driving has been pretty easy, though we did do about 200 km on a single track that was marked as a "50m Road Train Route". So we would have to pull over onto the dirt every now and then as this enormous lorry headed towards us.

Living out of a rental car and rucksack is proving to be pretty tolerable so far. The only strangeness is that I have been having very vivid dreams every night. I don't think that my brain is used to this much input. The weather started off hot and very humid, but has gotten about 5 degrees Celcius cooler as we've gone South. Today we have rain and wind, which is actually quite a relief.

The diving we did our of Cairns on the Spirit of Freedom was excellent by the way. The boat was most splendid, and the crew superb. The sea conditions were perfect so we did a few sites that are normally not able to be reached. Highlights were glimpsing a hammerhead shark about 20m below me, diving on a rock wall that dropped straight down to 1km and seeing a variety of clownfish (of Finding Nemo fame).

I'm sure there are other things I was meaning to mention here, but they escape me at present.