This is the biggest croc at the Australian Zoo (where Steve Irwin works). She a beut! Steve did his first demo here with this guy. I was really impressed with the size of the croc, and Steve’s willingness to get real close to it. Crazy Hippie.

This is a pic from Fraser Island. I think the site name is Painted Sands. It reminded me of western America.

Fraser Island is the largest sand island on the planet. It is largely undeveloped, because Australians are nice to thier environment. The only way to get around on the island is buy renting a 4 wheel drive and driving in the sand.

Hide your babies!!!

This is another picture from Fraser Island. This island is so big that it has a rain forest growing on it. It is also home to the most pure breed dingos on the planet. The dingos spend most of their time trying to steal food from the visitors. If that doesn’t work, I guess they go after babies. The Australian governement is trying hard to keep the dingos as wild animals, so it is illegal to feed a dingo. You can even get in trouble if you don’t secure your food and the dingo gets to it.

Here is another intersting pool table that we came across. We found this table in a bar in Townsville. It helped us kill some time while we were waiting to go live at sea for a week.

I found playing on this table real easy. It seemed there was always a shot somewhere and all the pockets were the same.

We are finally underwater. The highlight of the Australia adventure was spending a week with Mike Ball out at sea. This shot is from Anemone City. Mark and I were exploring the sight when I looked over and saw two cuttle fish. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was cool so I signaled Mark and we spent the rest of the dive taking pics and vid. One of the cuttle fish was shy, so we didn’t get much from him. The other one (this one) seemed to be checking us out as much as we were checking him out.

The cuttle fish is related to the octopus and squid. They have eight tenticles and can change shape and texture to hide. I didn’t notice much in the way of changing while we were looking at them. When I went back and looked at my video I saw this guy change both shape and texture in responce to the flash on Mark’s camera.

This is a close up of an anemone. There are two shrimp that call this anemone home.

Kerrin, my video instructor, helped me get this shot. Before taking the class I had spent a lot of time shooting big stuff. Kerrin suggested I get close to some small stuff and shoot it. On this dive he specifically pointed to this anemone and told me to take some video. I’m glad he did, becuase I’m very happy with this picture and the video I ripped it from.

Another anemone picture. This is the clasic anemone with a clown fish in it. I really enjoyed the chance to see so many anemones. We don’t get much of them over in the Atlantic where I dive.

This is another anemone with a clown fish. This picture was taken at night. The fish were sleeping until Mark and I came across them. I don’t think they were thrilled to see us.

I’m not sure what the black fish are. Once it woke up, the orange fish spent some time chasing these fish around.

One of the many nice things about the live aboard was the sunsets. I’m sure the sun rises were equally impressive, but I never saw any of them. This is looking out to the west from the top deck of the boat. As the Italian on board would say, “Bella.”

I was really impressed to finally get some shots of the ellusive underwater land mamal. There are some curiuos creatures who can not breath underwater, do not have streamlined bodies, and are pretty much useless when not on land. So they strap air bombs to their backs and put on wierd cloths and jump in the water. While underwater they risk drowning, and air emoblisms. They also realize that they are no longer at the top of the food chain. All that to look at some fish. Some one should tell them about aquariums.