Wonderful creatures and features of Manly

As some of you know we are trying to move to Manly (if we can ever find a nice, affordable place). I thus thought I'd show you what Manly beach looks like. I must however admit that there generally is many more tourists on the beach as this photo was taken in the middle of winter here. Besides being a 15 minute ferry ride from Circular Quay, Sydney CBD, we are really looking forward to moving to Manly as the divecentre we usually go with is there, as well some rather good divelocation. This weekend we have visited two of those places. The picture of the seahorse is from the sharknets down by the manly ferry. The nets are actually rather amazing as they have been left for things to grow on for quite some time and there is hundreds of seahoarses hanging onto the nets to protect themselves from swell. I was soo happy after this dive as I have always wanted to see a seahorse. I will however have to go back down and try to get a better photo of them as I am not very pleased with this one.

Additionally we went to Fairlight beach, which is just a few hundred metres to the left of the wharf. Here we saw some pretty big Port Jackson sharks as well as a few different nudibranchs.

I really want a macro lens to capture these very small but beautiful creatures better!!!

Blue Mountains

Last weekend we decided to do a little daytrip to the Blue Mountains, which is about an hour west of Sydney CBD. The area is in fact very large and suitable for hiking. Me and Markus were however a bit lazy and did a shorter walk incorporating all of the most famous/touristy bits of the park. We started at the Three sisters, which you can see above. We then walked to a skyline that took us across a waterfall to the entry if the worlds steepest tram, and I can assure you it was pretty steep!!!

The tram was originally put in place for shipping of coal from the mines at the bottom, but became a very popular means of transportation for many tourists that did not wish to take the two hour walk down to the bottom during the weekends. Eventually it was rebuilt and turned into a pure tourist attraction. As you can see below there is also some nice lookout points in the park, this one called the honeymoon outlook.

France with the family

Hi everyone!

As many of you know Markus and I have decided to stay in Australia for some time. As I had some time between finishing my degree and starting work, I decided to go back to Sweden and spend some time with the family. Markus could unfortunately not come as he is already working.

I must admit I was quite lucky as dad had decided to take the family for a holiday to southern France, or a small village between Clavier and Bargemon up in the mountains to be more precise, with Annikas brother and his family.

It was really good to spend all that time with the family just relaxing. We mostly spent our days sunbathing by the pool or down in Antibes or Nice. Another thing I really enjoyed was the tennis classes my brother Karl gave me, even though he informed me that I play worse than a monkey.

The picture to the left shows Julia, my 15 year old sister and Paula, her cousin. The three of us took our chance to do a little dance at the locals foam party in the village of Clavier. The foam got really high, even up to our ears at one time and we were soaked when we were leaving. We did however have a really good night.

Below you can see one of the little streets in one of the other villages we visited, as well as dad and Annika in Grasse and a cute worm me, Annika and Julia found on one of our small exploration walks.

This final picture shows me and both of my sisters, Elinor and Julia (from the left).

Diving Sydney and South West Rocks April 2007

As you all know Markus and I now live in Dee Why. We have also finally started diving in the weekends like we were hoping for. There are in fact quite a few interesting dive spots right where we live in Sydney. What we've found most supprising is the vast variety of marine life. Above all, we have seen many species we've never encountered before. My personal favourite if the Weedy Seadragon, which is on the picture above. As you can see it is about 20 cm long and has very cute mini fins which it uses to swim. It is a rather slow animal however. It's also very colourful but prefers to hang out in the sea weed.

Another favourite of ours is the cuttlefish. It looks a little bit like a mix between a squid and an elephant. The best thing about this fish is that it can change its colour to match the environment. It does however have a red base colour.

Our final favourite is part of the shark family. It does however not look that much like a shark and is a little difficult to spot. It is called a wobelligong shark.

There are also many other fish, such as rays, squids, smaller fish and the blue groupers. Some of the blue groupers are really friendly and after playing with a really big one for some time it followed us for the rest of our dive.

We spent easter at South West Rock, a little town about 6 hours drive north of Sydney. We went there with five other people from Manly Divecenter. The town was very nice and we had a lot of fun. We were unfortunately a little bit unfortunate with the weather and we had 30-40 knots wind and a 3 meter swell in our first day. We did not make it into the cave, which was our target and some people were even seasick under the water, as the waves seemed to be rather large there too.

I have to admit, I was also rather scared on the boat, as I believe the weather was soo bad the trip propably should have been cancelled. The second days the waves had however gone down to about two meters and we went to a place called Green Island, where we saw a lot of marine life and a turtle. The best dive was however on day three when we finally made it into the cave. It was definitely worth all the trouble!!! The cave was about 100 metres long and filled with fish, crayfish, rays and sharks. Additionally it was so long that there was no natural light in a very large part of it, which we found rather exciting. Coming out of the cave, there was a lot of grey nurse sharks circuling the exit. We loved the dive so much we did both dives there that day.

Settled in Sydney

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all well. Sorry we have not posted anything in quite some time. Markus and I are however fully set in Sydney now. We live by a beach called Dee Why, which is one of the northern beaches and about 10 minutes drive north of Manly for those of you who have been there. I am studying at Macquarie University and am enjoying it even though there is quite a big workload despite the fact that I do not really learn anything except for how to memorize long things and various things about the Asian culture. About 90% of the people in my class are Asian and the rest is exchange students from all around the world. I do not know why but the Australians do not seem that interested in studying finance at the master level. One day a week I have a class in Manly at ICM, which is a big beautiful castle overlooking the beach and surrounded by large gardens. Nicole Kidman actually had her wedding reception there. You really cannot complain about the location, even though the course is extremely unstructured.

Markus got a really good job as a customized joiner at a firm called Debrich. He puts up custom-made architecturally designed interiors in very rich peoples houses. Since we got here he has been working away from home, in a town called Collecta, about half of the time. Collecta is a real Australian town and you are really in the outback. Fortunately he has been home in the weekends.

In the beginning we did not have that much time to do fun things in the weekends as there were a lot of administrative getting-started things that took a lot of time and money. Now we are however almost done with all of that, with buying a white Pajero as our latest move.

The last couple of weekends we have been at the beach, either here in Dee Why, or in Manly or at Shelly Beach.

Dee Why beach is really beautiful and long and ends with a golf course on a peninsula that leads you to the next beach. It is perfect for walks and there are always healthy people (not us) jogging along the beach. What is nice about the beach is that it is not too crowded. Manly is really nice with lots of shops and restaurants but also a lot of people everywhere. We are however planning on moving there when I start working in September as you can take a ferry and be in town in 15 minutes. At the moment I am commuting to school for about 4 hours per day, which is getting pretty tiring.

Hideaway Island

We spent our last day on a small island called Hideaway Island, just of the capital of Vanuatu, Port Vila on the island of Efate. Port Vila was really big in comparison to Luganville, even though it was still very small with just a few quite primitive shops and restaurants. We went into Port Vila to watch the fruit market which was open 24 hours per day and sold a lot of fruit and vegetables neither one of us had ever seen before. In the afternoon we snorkelled and visited the worlds only underwater post office at about three metres depth. We also posted some postcards and looked at some more fish. One fish was biting my hair tie quite hard which was a bit funny and scary.




We snorkelled until it got dark and then we had a big nice dinner. We both really enjoyed snorkling at Hideaway Island and especially all the different types of anenomy fish we saw there.