lord howe day 4

 I caught the sunrise this morning from Ned's Beach.

This is the beach that we will be feeding the fish from at some stage. And using the GoPro to capture them going for it. And Kym is thinking of snorkelling here as well. This is the view above the beach at Ned's. Those are Kentya Palms which are sold internationally as a hardy indoor plant, and that is my hire car.

The weather looked a bit iffy for today and Kym was unsure if his fishing trip was still going ahead. He headed out on his bike to the Island Jetty at 8am to see if it was still on, and, thank goodness, it was.

I went on the 'Chase 'n' Thyme', a 4 hour bus cruise around the island to learn all the local hot spots and the history of the place. Peter was so very informative and an absolute wealth of knowledge. For example, the kids go to school bare foot, and that is part of their uniform policy. The power for the island is produced by a large diesel generator which goes through sixty six 200 litre drums of fuel a week. The recycling program here is innovative and very well supported here. If you wanted a dog you must be a resident for 2 years and then apply to the LHI administration. You pay a deposit of $1500 for the right to have a dog which is then refunded once the dog is immunized and de-sexed. There are bike racks everywhere!! No ice coffee on the island (most milk is Tetrapak (longlife) so it can get out here without going out of date. Some of the magnificant Banyan trees have been dated to be over 600 years old.

Rush hour ;op

We called into the Meteorology Station to watch the release of the daily weather balloon.

We had the best of the weather this morning, the sun was shining and it was very pleasent. This afternoon is the total opposite. Bucketing rain and I occasionally heard thunder. I'm sheltered inside and typed up some of  this blog post while it passed over. I was a bit worried about Kym. That rain BUCKETED down.

The clouds broke up and the sun made an occasionaly appearance. I headed out to capture some of the spots that I had learnt about this morning, and to others to see how it looked in the camera, if I had the right light. I'll be revisiting some of those areas when the sun's out.

This shot is actually two Norfolk pines lined up to look like one tree. They were planted exactly this way to be a landmark to identify one of the three natural entrances through the coral into the lagoon. I was just about to shoot this one when the Blue Billie went through the frame.

Yay. Kym was back from his fishing charter. I met him at the jetty and took the compulsory photos of the 'big' fish of the day. He had such an awesome day.

They missed most of the rain that we had, but it was still rough getting out and back from Ball's Pyramid.

It's about 20km south east of LHI and it rises 548m in the air, making it the tallest volcanic sea stack in the world. The catch was mostly Kingfish and Tuna, and the Wahu managed to get away!!

(ignore the watermark- Kym and the other fella on the boat took these photos. The watermark is set as default on my www resizing program I use)

Sunset was not even considered tonight as it was so dull and overcast. The sun had zero chance of making an appearance.

We headed to the Bowls Club tonight for their weekly Pie Night. A couple of ladies make dozens and dozens of homemade pies for the Pie Night. They were delicoious. Served up with mash potato, peas and gravy. Wonderfully hearty after a cooler afternoon.

We took a lovely couple with us in the car as the Lorhiti bus was full, and we were all heading to the same spot for dinner. It seems most of the locals were there tonight too. The bowls club is also the Island's pub, so it was very well supported seeing that it was a Monday night.

We are having a Lorhiti Lunch on Tuesday. Kym has enough Kingfish fillets (about 3kgs) he thinks, and offered it as lunch with all the people staying here at Lorhiti. It's far too much for him and we can't take it with us, so I thought it was a brilliant idea to have it for lunch with the other residents here. One of the ladies offered to cook it and we're all bringing salad items and crockery to pool together. The weather forecast doesn't look promising for our round the island boat tour, so this is our back up plan.

cya tomorrow