Since it was a bit quiet last week we had a day of discovering scuba for some of our dive center crew. Ferdi, Jeric, Erwin and Francis enjoyed the experience and now have a better understanding of why so many folks come from all over the world to dive here.
Last week some doctors visited Provincial Hospital in Calapan to carry out
Surgery on children with Harelip. Though the actual surgery is free it is always expenses around such transport cost for parent and the child, food and others. Tommy & Lina Soderstrom, Göran Ritter and Rudy Schmiedel decide to chip in some money to help some of the kids who’s parent can’t afford these expenses. Giving 5,000 pesos each we thought it would be good for 3 kids including medicine but Lina managed the money so it was good enough for 4 children! Two got the operation to close the gap in the gum so they can speak properly and two children got their lips rebuilt. Angie Robles from our accounting office and our Instructor Allison Manis also helped by donating milk for these children as they obviously only could take fluid after the operation.
October 14
Today was another early start with a ride out to Parramatta and then to Val Clues to pick up our travel bags before heading to PADI to finish off our ride at PADI Sydney who had invited us to a BBQ and to have us give a presentation on the ride and what the ride was all about. [more]
October 13
It was a great morning, sunshine, clam sea and we decided on a breakfast to wait for the dive centres to open before we could visit them. We took a leisurely ride around town, up to the lighthouse and after we visited who we had to see it was time to head off to New Castle and down to Sydney, stopping along the way and taking in the last of our ride. It was [more]
October 12
Left around 7am for Coffs Harbour to meet up with the Jetty Dive team.
Meeting Mick, the first thing he wanted to show us was his boat, we had
talked about this boat and I was excited to see it myself. As time was a bit
short we could not go out for a dive, but a quick look was clearly a must.
Meeting up with the boat on his dry dock, looking at it he said, are you
sure you don¹t want to go for a spin! I could not resist and we all stood [more]
October 7, 8 & 9
Its been three days of fun here in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Leaving Eric’s home on the Sunshine Coast, Friday afternoon after a great lunch at the Edge Café Montville we headed off to Brisbane. Finding our home for the next three nights and meeting up with Matt Carter (our flat mate) we went to register and see what was happening at the ODEX dive show, where I would give a presentation on the Saturday, about our ride around Australia. That night we orientated ourselves to Brisbane, had a few beers with the exhibitors before calling it a night. [more]
The past two days have been easy riding and very relaxing days, no tight schedule and no need at all for early starts. Left Gladstone and headed for Bundaberg to see where they brew that Bundaberg Rum. It had been many years since I was in Bundaberg. As all these places, it really has changed and little to nothing I remembered. Had lunch and left for Tin Can Bay, the roadwork’s became less and travelling was much more pleasant. Coming into Tin Can Bay and taking a turn down along the waterfront it was clear why my old friend [more]
October 3
Today was a very hard start after last nights mammoth drinking session with Jim and Snake. Today we left at 9am, the latest start since we left Sydney some five weeks ago. Leaving Cairns we could not help but notice the green, so much of it compared to what we have bad been seeing in the past weeks. We rode almost non stop to Townsville where we stopped and had lunch and dropped into see Craig from Remote Area Divers. After a good [more]
October 1
We were up at around 5am this morning, thinking of getting an early start with all intentions of going up to Karumba north of Normanton, north mid Queensland. It was a bit frustrating as we needed a little oil and the service station although awake, lights on and several staff, they would not sell us anything till 6am, not even if they were ready. A country town attitude we are learning to (slowly) to accept as the way it is, why, don’t ask! [more]
September 30
Leaving Katherine at around 6am we travelled south on our way to Three Ways before turning left to head towards the Queensland border, not knowing how fare we would go today, just simply, “playing it by ear”. [more]
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