Floods

As many of you know by now parts of Australia have been experiencing severe flooding, but Jenny and I are safe. The floods first hit the city of Rockhampton which is an eight hour drive north of here and with rains that have been continuing for weeks more and more areas are being affected. Queensland, the state of Australia where we live has been experiencing record breaking rainfall and now the ground is saturated, dams are full and when it rains it just runs to the rivers. With it raining almost everyday we are seeing a lot more communities afflicted with flooding. Last weekend it was the city of Gympie about 4 hours north of us and now it is hitting Brisbane about 45 minutes north. For me this means I cannot travel out to farms to work as most every major road is either underwater or severely damaged. Again Jenny and I are safe as the gold coast is not built around any sizable river the area we live in has some elevation, but we are praying for the thousands of people who are being displaced. We want to help out the government and red cross are not looking for volunteers yet.

Snorkeling at Julian Rocks

New Year's Day we drove to Byron Bay and went on a snorkeling tour at Julian Rocks Marine Park. We had just purchased snorkeling gear and reserved the tour with money from my parents for Christmas. The weather wasn't the nicest as the sky was completely covered with clouds and a light mist of rain was falling. I guess the rain didn't really matter as we were going to get wet completely in a matter of minutes. The tour operator drove us to the beach where the boats were put in. The ride was a bit rough and exhilarating with swells about 3 feet or more. The marine reserve is about 2.5 kilometers (~1.5 miles)  from the mainland coast off Byron Bay. More than 500 tropical and temperate fish species are known to found within the reserve. As soon as we got in the water you could see fish everywhere. The water was actually was quite deep up to 30 feet in places near the rocks which are remains of former volcanoes. Unfortunately the visibility was not very good. The divers in our group were able to go much deeper and saw a loggerhead turtle that was at least 70 years old. We did spot a carpet shark on the ocean floor below us but it was nothing to be worried about. It was very cool to swim with and be completely surrounded by schools of fish. Julian Rocks is considered a top ten dive location in Australia. Although it lacks in coral, the fish are amazing and we were told that the fish here much better than what we would see in the Great Barrier Reef. We will need to spend some more time breaking in our new snorkeling gear and plan to return here and head to the Great Barrier Reef for some more snorkeling. Unfortunately the underwater photos did not turn out very well because of poor visibility. We decided to cut our road trip short and head home stopping for lunch near the ocean in Kingscliff. Since Byron Bay is less than a 90 minute drive from where we live we decided to come back to the area and explore the numerous national parks at another time when the weather is nicer.