20 October 2008

Whale of a time!


This weekend was a great one. Friday night Chris and I went swimming after work and then met up with some friends at a local bar. We woke up Saturday and met up with some of our friends and did a walk from Coogee to Bondi Beach. It's a gorgeous walk along the ocean and it typically takes about 2 hours. As you're walking along you literally come across about 3 or 4 different beaches that each have their own little charm. So basically, from Coogee you hit Tamarama, Bronte, Clovelly and then Bondi. It really is an amazing walk.

As we were going along, we got to Bronte beach and noticed out in the distance (about 150 meters off shore) a mother whale and her calf. There was a surfer nearby who must have been about 20 feet away from this whale. It was unreal! Before we thought it couldn't get any better, we spotted about 10 dolphins swimming around and jumping out of the water around the whales. I swear these animals KNEW there was a crowd watching them and they put on a serious show.

We watched for about 20 minutes and more and more surfers started surrounding the whales and dolphins. I couldn't believe how close they were! Luckily we got some video and a bunch of pictures which I have put together in one video below. (If you take a look as this picture, you can see a dolphin jumping out of the water!

The original reason why we did this walk was for an event called "Sculpture by the Sea" which basically consists of a bunch of artists who... create sculpture and put them along the coast by the sea! In the video, I also added a slideshow of some of the artwork we saw.

It's a little hard to really see the whales and the dolphins and this video is very amateur, but I do hope you enjoy. I've never seen anything like this in my life and I only wish we could have better captured the moment. The video just doesn't so it much justice... but have a look anyway!



After the walk in the beautiful sun, we decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant called Icebergs. It overlooks the famous Bondi Beach and has an amazing view.

Our friends Amy and Gary who we went with also have a blog, so check out their post too!

Click here for Amy and Gary's Blog!



12 October 2008

Bird's the Word


G'day mates! I know it's been a while since we did our last blog posting. We've been really busy over the past month with Chris starting a new semester and Spring on its way. We'll be sure to update you as the Spring/Summer season passes as we have lots of exciting and fun adventures in the next few weeks and months.

In the meantime, Chris had a pretty exciting experience in the shower yesterday. Yes, that's what this blog has come to. But seriously - get your minds out of the gutter, this a PG rated video. Here goes!



To give you a little perspective, the cockatoo was literally 2 feet away from the shower and had absolutely NO fear of humans. I guess Chris is pretty engaging... even to a cock-a-too!