Good'ay mate! How're ya going?

Yesterday we had 3 flights in one day from Singapore to Melbourne, Melbourne to Adelaide, and Adelaide to Port Lincoln. It was pretty tiring and Steph managed to fall asleep at 2 airports.

Port Lincoln has a very American feel to it with spacious roads, big cars and no flats; everyone seems to know everyone. It is the seafood capital of Australia, farming the biggest and most expensive blue fin tuna in the world and shipping 98% of it to Japan (for the sushi of course - we look forward to trying on our last stop). The coastline is beautiful but you want to stay out of the sea!

We're staying in a hostel with a big communal kitchen so last night we enjoyed cooked our own grub for the first time in months.

Today we were up and out at 6.15am for our day trip to Neptune Islands to see some great white sharks up close! Happy Friday 13th indeed.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any great whites. About a month ago a family of Killer Whales, two adults and three young ones, came through the area. They killed a great white; the locals said they may have been teaching the young ones how to kill. This resulted in the great whites moving away from the Neptune Islands. There hasn't been a sighting since but the locals are sure they'll return at some point.

But we headed out on the trip nonetheless with a glimmer of hope that today would be the day they return. All day the crew threw bait into the water in an attempt to lure in some sharks. We decided to get our wetsuits on and jump in the cage despite there being no sharks as there were some huge fish up to 3 foot long.

Although no great whites turned up, when we were in the cage we got incredibly excited to see a large shadow heading towards the cage from the dark ocean in front of us. It was a bronze whaler shark! We'd say about 6-8 foot long. It swam straight towards us and then upwards to go for the bait. It was pretty amazing to see!

On the boat we watched a documentary on the seafood of Port Lincoln and heard about an expensive thing called Abalone. It is a sea snail found on the sea bed so can only be caught by divers. It costs AUD$200 per kilo. Funnily enough, when we were back cooking dinner in our hostel an Aussie guy had been given some Abalone and once cooked we got to try some. It's very enjoyable, kind of with a squid texture but a nicer fishy taste.

All in all we had a good day on the boat despite being disappointed in the lack of Bruce's out there.

Steph and Max x