May 10 - Australian SCUBA associations require a diving physical before they will allow you to dive in the country, so we did that. I didn't enjoy it, but it could have been worse. When that was over, we went fishing at Tichi Temba. I'd never been fishing before, so that was fun. PI was much more successful than anyone else and caught 4 fish. Unfortunately, because the tide was low and they've been having a drought for a couple of months now, the only thing we could get close enough to catch from the shore were toad fish. They're little and even the pelicans and cormorants who joined us to grab what we threw back weren't interested. I enjoyed catching them, but getting them off the hook was not exactly my cup of tea. Especially when the hook was especially stuck. Ew! Anyway, this was the first time I'd seen a pelican up close and they're HUGE!!! They probably stand almost up to my waist! I love pelicans :)
After fishing we went home and watched Open Waters in a further atempt to talk us out of diving. My mom had been telling us for a couple of months at this point that we were going to be eaten by sharks and we shouldn't go diving.



May 11 - On our way to Mt. Coot-tha Botanical Gardens we stopped at the dive shop in Toowong to book the dives for the next weekend. The botanical gardens were a lot of fun :) The first thing we did when we got there was eat our picnic lunch above a really nice pond. Very close to us was a very large lizard. They have quite a lot of lizards in Australia, but they don't tend to just lie around on display, so we were lucky to get such a good look at him.



The rest of the park was fun. They had a really nice bonsai display, a bush tucker garden (native plants that are edible w/ plaques describing what they're used for), a tropical display dome, lots of cactuses, and our first look at rainforest.

May 12 - This was a rest day as the previous one had been a bit of an early day and we were still potentially a bit jet lagged. We did some grocery shopping and had lunch at the sushi train. They have a LOT of different things in their stores. All their margerine is more yellow and all their cheese is more white. There fruits and vegetables are, on the whole, a LOT bigger than ours. They also have chicken flavoured everything. Chicken flavoured chips, crackers, salt...etc. They have pancake batter, muffin mix, etc. in a jug that's half empty. You just add liquids and shake it until it's mixed. Made specifically for camping. A lot of their candy and snack food is different too.

Near the grocery store is a resteraunt where they have a train w/ sushi on it and you just sit down at the bar and pick what you want to eat off as it goes by. Not PI's favourite meal during the trip, but he found enough to eat. On the way back we got lammingtons at a bakery. Apparently lammingtons are a normal thing for them. I don't think I've ever seen them over here. They're cake, covered in chocolate then rolled in coconut. Sometimes they have jam in the middle as well. Yum!!! We spent most of the evening working on a puzzle.


This is a lammington

...to be continued...