lord howe day 6

 After taking a bit of a walk yesterday to Middle Beach to get my bearings, I made my way there in the pre-dawn light for my sunrise shots. It's a lovely secluded spot.

The purple pre dawn. These were the actual colours. I haven't touched them at all.

sunrise @ 6.35am.

And it's 234 steps back up the cliff to get to the top. (yes I counted them lol) with a heavy 10kg camera bag on my back, tripod under one arm and a big umbrella in the other.

When I got back Kym and Bob, one of the fellas we have next door at Lorhiti, were ready for their 8am round of golf.  As the golf course is some distance away, I taxied the boys out there for their 9 holes. Bob the doll hitched went round as well.

The night before at the Pine Trees Restaurant, 5 us staying here at Lorhiti decided to head out on the Coral Viewing Glass Bottom Boat. And as I was the only one with a car, I volunteered to be taxi. 10am this morning I took the first couple down and then checked on the golf boys to see if they needed a lift back. They had decided to play the back 9 as well and would be finished before we were back from the boat, so Kym came back with me so he could have the car after I had delivered the 2nd couple and myself to the boat shed.

The Coral trip was well worth it. The glass bottom is constantly being shammied, and when Dean (the skip) snorkelled under the boat, he scraped the glass from the bottom side as well. The fish were beautiful and the coral was pretty cool. I took out the GoPro Camera and had it on the boat hook and had it underwater while Dean dived down and feed the fish a Sea Urchin right under the glass. I took some video of it as well. Love the GoPro.

Double Header fish in foreground. It's not as big as a man irl. more like 50-75cm long.

We had a rain squall move over us, and then the sun broke through once again. When the rain comes in here, the sun is not far away. I am so lovin' the Winter skies here. Dramatic and forever changing.

When we landed back on the beach, we had a hot water foot bath to get the beach sand off and towelled them dry before putting on our shoes. Hot drinks were handed out, and I had a great yarn to the lady behind the counter, who I discovered was Dean's Mum. Dean's kids are 6th generation Islanders and the people here take great pride in their lineage to LHI.

Kym met us with the car and we took one of the couples back up to Lorhiti, while the others chose to go for a walk.

By the time I got back and quickly downloaded the jpg and mpeg files from the GoPro, I was feeling a little bit weary. I only had 4 hours sleep from the night before due to late night blogging and working on yesterday's  photos before the alarm went off at 5.45am for sunrise. I've still not finished yesterday's yet, so this will be another post without pics for the moment. As soon as they are done, I'll insert them within the post.

I had a bit of a nana nap, and when I woke an hour later, it was very overcast and looking very threatening. Thunder and the occasional flash of lightening that could be seen. The temperature had dropped a fair bit too. Kym headed out on his bike in between rain showers and I took the camera down to the Island Jetty to catch some drama in the sky. I ended up staying there for sunset, even tho that ended up being a bit of a non event.

Notice the shadow cast in the sky from the left mountain (Mt Lidgbird)

I've bumped into Mel (a local) and visa versa, a few times. I was on the jetty with the camera on tripod, when she called out g'day. I damn near jumped out of my skin. I was so immersed in what I was doing and I had no idea she was there. I wouldn't have heard her come up anyway as it was reasonably windy. We had a great ol' yarn, mostly about cameras and photography and stuff. What a really lovely person. She'd be a great LHI ambassador I reckon.

When I got back to the apartment, it was near dark and cold. We had arranged with Bob and Gwen (the people next door to us) to have dinner together at the Golf Club. Due to lack of bookings tonight, that was cancelled so we ended up going to Humpty Micks for tea. We all connected so well and laughed a lot. They are a retired couple and just enjoy getting away!! Lucky them.

We had coffee with them next door before we came back into to our apartment for the evening. So now I've caught up blogging my day, but I still have yesterday's and today's photos to work on.

Something else I've learnt here today. LHI being a small island in the middle of the ocean means there is no guarantee that the scheduled flights will happen. Apparently the flight that was supposed to leave Sydney yesterday was cancelled as it was taxing out on the tarmac in Sydney, due to a mechanical fault. Yesterday's afternoon flight landed here, but was unable to leave due to a mechanical fault. Today's plane circled the Island a couple of times and returned back to Sydney due to the wind here at that time. AND it had the part on board for the plane that's still here on the tarmac from yesterday afternoon.So that means that people that were supposed to leave here yesterday morning, can't leave until tomorrow afternoon's flight. (Hopefully)

You can understand my concern as we are leaving here tomorrow (Thursday) and we have connecting flights to get from Sydney back to Adelaide tomorrow. I'm a bit worried by this mechanical fault. I'm also a bit worried about my extra bag, this being the tripod bag. My suitcase is a couple of kilos overweight as I hadn't planned on being able to wash clothes while we are here. The tripod bag will have a few things jammed in it as well as the tripod to lighten up the suitcase. And if it absolutely has to, the tripod can go on another flight and catch up with me back home. And, just to top it off, you and your hand luggage are weighed before you get on board the plane. So even if I put the camera around my neck to lighted up the camera bag, the bag and me will still be overweight. Hopefully I am fretting over nothing, and it will all work out for the best........if we can get off the island on Thursday.

Will keep you posted  ;op
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