After some pretty shitty diving conditions over the weekend and on Monday, the weather finally started to improve yesterday. A large stingray, a devil ray and a school of big-eye jacks as well as the usual array of sharks at Peter's Patch was a good start to yesterday's dive day. The second dive at Matrix was a nice drift dive, with a bunch of titan triggerfish, a large crocodile fish and some smaller stuff. 

Last but not least, the group stopped at the "Stubborn Hellion", a B25 plane wreck for a quick look. As the plane lies in only 12m of water, we do this as a residual air dive, i.e. keep 70 bar in your tank on dive 2 and use it here. After about 20 minutes, you've seen it all anyway, and there isn't much else around to look at. 

Today, the sun is out, hurray, and the Der Yang shipwreck and a Catalina floatplane are on the menu for the morning dives, with our special Mandarinfish dive to follow this afternoon. 

Tiny, but oh so colourful fish!

What a day!!

On one of his visits to Lissenung, our good friend Andrew Bowes from PNG Holidays  and I talked about how Lissenung had bought some school chairs for one of the schools at Enuk. Well, we bought the chairs....our guests that had visited Enuk Island during their stay at Lissenung had actually paid for them.

Anyway, a few weeks after he went home to Cairns, Andrew skyped me and asked whether we would be interested in some school desks to go with those chairs. Is the Pope catholic? I asked. Of course we are interested in those chairs. How to get them here, though? How many chairs are we talking? Oh, about 55 or 60.... Well, we'll need a container for that, so lets see if we can't get other stuff as well.

Cue Peter Mc Ewan, our friend here in Kavieng and president of the Kavieng Rotary Club. He got onto the internet and through a friend of a friend got in touch with Jennifer from QLD Health. Another friend of ours, Greg Parr, got me in touch with the Calvary Hospital in Cairns. Last but not least, Andrew Bowes has friends at Wicked Campervans, who's storage room we also raided for pillows, sheets and blankets. Funny that, the backpackers don't want to use the pillow of another backpacker, they want to buy new stuff. Never mind that no hotels throw out pillows after each use..... Never mind, though, we are happy with this attitude, it netted us enough pillows and sheets to kit out the hospital in Kavieng and have some left overs. Mike Ball also came to the party and donated a bunch of sheets and pillow cases, all still in the plastic wrapping from the laundry service!!
After a week of picking stuff up, packing it strategically into a container, having said container road-delivered to Townsville where it got trans-shipped to Port Moresby and eventually Kavieng, customs got in the way! Of course they were trying to charge import duty on the donated goods, but eventually,

Yesterday, I went to Kavieng town and delivered 3 hospital beds, a gurney, 4 physio beds, a weight chair (for people that need to be weighed, but can't stand) and a box full of blood pressure cuffs to the Kavieng Hospital today. The three hospital beds are the first ones in our local hospital that can be raised and lowered semi-automatic. Most of the hospital beds in Kavieng are just standard beds, like in your bedroom, but much more basic and uncomfortable. Imagine having an op and having to sit yourself up, without the help of the bed. The gurney that takes patients from surgery to the ward doesn't even have a mattress!

It is truly humbling to see Dr Watt (head doctor of the hospital) and the nurses so happy with new beds for their patients! Kenji, who is our Japanese Physiotherapist friend (those of you that have enjoyed the magic of his fingers will remember him), was jumping up and down with joy over his physio beds. It puts life into perspective, makes you wonder why you were so upset about who left the toilet seat up. And it also made me determent to get more stuff up here. So, if anyone lives in or near Cairns and has access to hospital stuff, please let me know. We need the following items urgently, plus more, of course:

  -   wheelchairs

  -   walking frames

  -   crutches

  -   a couple of corsets for spinal injuries, such as spinal compressions fractures etc.

 

Photos of the delivery yesterday will follow as soon as I have time to go through them all.

Diving? How does that go again?

I can't remember the last time I went diving, but it has been a long time since I've been out on the boat. Our friends Mandy & Steve visited and talked me into joining them on Thursday. I'm glad they were so persuasive, it was a great morning out.

We went to Albatross Passage, as the current was coming in and with full moon just three days prior, it should be running quite strong, so bringing lots of fish action with them. We were not disappointed! In fact, the first dive was so good that we decided to do the second dive at Albatross, also. Unfortunately, during our one-hour surface interval, the rain came and it got quite dark down there at times. However, the current was still running strong, so the water was a bit clearer than on the first dive.



Top of the reef at Albatross Passage, and this is only
the small stuff.



Visibility wasn't that great, and I'm not a very good
photographer, so this photo shows only part of a big
school of Barraducas.

This was a decent size Grey Reef Shark, and he/she
seemed to be interested in checking us out as much
as we wanted to see him/her closer.



This is what I love about Albatross: You have big stuff on
one side, and then, when you are bored with that (yeah,
right, as if...), you have a beautifully covered wall on the
other side.



Where on earth did that month just go?

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted any stories, photos or just silly comments. There has been plenty to report, a few photos to share, so lets get to it. 
A dive at my favourite dive site, The Bottleshop, produced some great shots. 

Scorpionfish 

How cute is this little Blennie? They
always look like they are smiling! 

While our friends Imi and Christopher Bartlett were here, Dietmar and I took the opportunity to join them on the dive boat one Sunday. Danny's Bommie was as great as always, as was Kavin II, even without Pygmy Seahorse. Christopher had given me some camera hints, which I was keen to try out. The first photos at Danny's Bommie were still "practice photos", but at Kaving, I was slowly getting the hang of it, .... at least I think so.... feel free to disagree. 

Orangutan Crab - what a hairy little bugger!

For want of knowing the proper name, I've called this
species "Green Crab".

Dietmar Smartypants just tells me this crab lives in the Halimeda algae, so it could be a Halimeda Crab. Of course, after looking this up on the internet, Mr Smartypants is right.

Speaking of not knowing what is what down there, have a look at this weirdo below. Christopher and I took stacks of photos, but mine didn't turn out very well, and as far as I know, neither did Christopher's. It's really hard to photograph something like this in blue water, especially when there is other stuff floating around. That doesn't make identifying this creature any easier, and no, it's not a fishing hook/floater! 

Jellyfish? It was approx. 20cm long from tail till the bent
where it then comes down to the two eyes, or whatever
they were. 

If anyone out there has any ideas as to what this could be, I'd love to hear from you! 

The divers just came back from Ral Island, a dive Dietmar and I were meant to join. Unfortunately, duty called, but according to the divers, they saw a mimic octopus! Yeah, right, and pigs might fly one day. You are just saying that to make us jealous, it's probably another one of those diver stories. No, no, we have pictures!! Great, thanks for telling me, I wanted to come along, remember?!?!?!?! 

Well, I've just informed them that we are going back to Ral tomorrow, whether they like it or not. I want to see Mimi, the mimic octopus! Luckily, the guests are also keen to see her again, so Ral it is tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get some decent photos, and hopefully, Mimi is still there.....