Well nothing too much exciting has been happening lately. Oh how could I forget we jumped out of a plane 8,000 foot up. I have to say we both have never felt so alive. With our skydive not being until 3.30pm we had a day of sitting about not really thinking about anything else. As we caught the sun on the beach we watched planes climbing high into the rich blue sky knowing that in hours to come we would be aboard a plane very similar getting ready to throw ourselves out and back towards the earth. As time ticked on I could tell that Ashleigh was getting a little nervous about the whole thing "You alright Love?" I would ask every 20 minutes or so "Yeah.......ohhh I cant believe we are going to do this. Sh*t!!!" As the day went by and the time grew nearer a nervous excitement built up inside us. We drove to the Sunshine Coast Skydivers office at the Caloundra Aerodrome and had a chat with the woman we had booked our jump with the day before. At first we had planned to jump from 6,000 feet as it was the cheapest option at $159 with an exit shot of us just before jumping out of the plane. But she dangled a massive a carrot and informed us the day before that if we got the DVD and photograph combo at a discounted rate of $129 instead of $180 on top of our jump price that our jump would be upgraded from 6,000 feet to 8,000 feet. This seed she planted grew in our heads and we thought if we were going to do a sky dive we might as well do it properly. So upgrade complete, we waited for our jump partners to introduce themselves to their fellow jumpers. As we waited in the centre another group had just returned and we managed to get a sneak peak at their video footage of their jumps. It was great and I couldn't wait to get up there, the excitement was building in Ashleigh too and I could see her saying to herself "I'm going to enjoy this if its the last thing I do!" Shortly after the sky dive team appeared and called out the relative names to the person they would be tandem jumping with. I cant even remember my guys name I was that excited, I think it was Avie and Ashleigh's was called Jason. Both great guys who loved their jobs and who could blame them. We were harnessed up and adorned with all the gear to ensure a safe jump and we made our way to the plane. After a quick part to camera for our videos we clambered into the plane one by one and took our seats as the plane rolled down the runway ready for take off. The plane was only a little chipmunk but boy could it go, it was like a rocket thundering down the runway before that slight moment of weightlessness as its wheels left the ground. We were on our way up. The flight took about 20 minutes to reach its altitude and the sights on the way up were great, our instructors would point out places in the distance and say roughly how far away they were. So it was nearly time to jump, there were three people jumping that day, me, Ash and a girl called Amy. She was up first and nervously shifted her way down the plane towards the door. A quick instruction from her instructor, a look at the camera then WHHHHOOOOOOSSSCCCCHHHHH she was out of there. Imagine the sound that a hoover makes when something is stuck in the nozzle then all of a sudden it clears and is sucked up into the vacuum, that's the noise it makes but on a much bigger scale. Then it was Ashleigh's turn, she made her way towards the door, posed for her exit shot, made that excited yet nervous laugh I have heard so many times throughout our travels then WHHHHOOOOOOSSSCCCCHHHHH she was out of there too. Last out of the plane was myself. I had been wanting to do this for so long and the time was finally here. I shuffled down to the door, posed for my exit shot and before I knew what had happened I was falling towards the earth at 200kph.

It is the craziest few seconds of your life, you don't know which way is up or down then all of a sudden you are face down looking at the earth below. It is hard to describe what the view is like. 360 degree sky and earth is all you see with a horizon that is curved. Seeing the curve of the earth is breathtaking. As you fall towards the earth air smashes up your nostrils and into your mouth with the sheer force of the descent doing some crazy things to your face. Ashleigh looks like a character from the TV show Bo Selecta in some of her shots. As you fall you cant do anything but laugh and your eyes dart about like a wasp in a milk bottle trying to take it all in. After what feels like a lifetime, the shoot opens and you jolt to an almost stop. As we floated through the crisp clean skies my instructor asked how it was "AHHHH I LOVED THAT, BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT...." is all I could shout out like a kid that has drank too much fizzy pop. As we floated downwards my instructor told me where we were landing and let me take over the reins for a while telling me which way to steer which was really cool. As I looked up there was Ashleigh floating above us waving like a kid on a school bus. Even though I was far away I could see her smile beaming down and I knew that she had loved it every bit as much as I had. Jason guided their parachute near to us and we had a little chat in the sky "How was that eh?" "AMAZING!" is all we managed to say to each other between our laughter before we drifted off in preparation for our landing. As you circle round on a tight axis you plummet towards the landing point at some speed and before you know it you are on your last loop round and coming into land. With feet up in the air we touched down on the soft white sand as we were watched by people gathered at the landing zone. What an experience. The 25-30 seconds of free fall felt like 5 minutes and in the words of Peter Allan "It must be amazing to reach terminal velocity through the action of gravity" and you know what, he was spot on. It is hands down the best thing we have ever done and we would recommend it to anyone. All of Ashleigh's angst building up to the jump was for nothing and she loved it that much that she wants to do another one and I don't blame her. For people who have skydived, they know what I'm on about. For those who haven't, go and do it! Or even better wait till we get home and we will do it with you. We are now officially addicted to adrenaline.

For hours afterwards we were still charged up and bouncing about everywhere, we just couldn't calm down and were full of energy. We kept running through the experience in our heads unable to get over what we had just done. What better way to celebrate though than a little drink and a trip to the pictures to watch the Hangover part II in a cinema from the 1960's. Strange little place inside a shopping mall with the screens dotted about on different floors. We laughed our backs off all the way through and after an action packed day it took a long time for the adrenaline to ware off to allow us to get a bit of shut eye. We have been moving up the coast at a good rate stopping of here and there for a day or so and have found some cracking little places. We have been to Caloundra, Maroochydore, Noosa Heads, Rainbow Beach, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg and today we pulled into the Town of 1770. Now all of these place have been what we thought the drive up the coast would be like. Noosa Heads and Caloundra being definite highlights of beauty and style, great little beach towns. We have been stopping off at every 'Big' thing that we drive past too to grab a quick photo, the one of Ned Kelly is a good one, trust the Aussies to make a big thing of a crazy murderer, the biggest bottle of Bundaberg Rum in Australia is a good one too. Well we have been travelling for nine months today and so far we have...

* sat ringside at a Thai kick boxing match
* took a ride on a crazy Tuk Tuk
* stroked tigers
* visited a floating village
* helped rebuild a home for a poor Cambodian family
* trekked and slept in the jungle
* swam in volcanic lake
* used a water fall as a shower
* watched sunrise over Angkor Wat temple
* climbed and sat on top of a temple
* learnt to ride an elephant, bathed and fed them
* floated down the Nam Song River in a rubber ring drunk on bee whiskey
* zip lined over jungle canopies 400 foot up in the air
* slept in a tree house 75 metres up off the ground
* spotted grey crested gibbons in the wild
* sand boarded down sand dunes with Vietnamese kids
* crawled through the Cu Chi tunnels
* shot an M16 riffle
* drank rice wine fermented with dead snakes, lizards, scorpions and a dead bird
* ate many wonderful things like snake, frog,crocodile, kangaroo, shark and probably dog
* got a bamboo tattoo
* walked the beaches of the Thai islands
* slept in bamboo, grass and palm leaf huts
* caught cockroaches, lizards, crickets,spiders, frogs and many more so Ash can sleep more easily at night
* sailed on a junk boat
* explored five mile long caves
* been attacked by monkeys for food and had them leave monkey juice all over my back
* spent Christmas day on a beach
* watched the worlds greatest fireworks display on the banks of Sydney Harbour
* walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and proposed at the top
* got engaged
* watched and bet on a crab race
* spent time with the Finley's of Canberra
* bought and pimped up a camper van
* painted a rock we shouldn't have at Coffs Harbour
* worked in a supermarket, in a wedding dress shop, on a cotton farm and a citrus fruit farm
* between us we picked roughly 75,000 mandarins and 72,225 oranges
* screamed on theme park rides like little girls
* climbed mount Ngungun and sat at it's summit
* held a koala bear
* hand fed a kangaroo and watched a joey in it's pouch
* jumped out of a plane doing a skydive at 8,000 feet
* drank many beers, wines and spirits from many different countries
* met many great people and many weird people
* drove up the eastern coast of Australia
* seen many 'Big' things
* took pictures of our friend William Redhead as part of the Willy round the world project

...and that's just to name a few. I wonder what we will do next?

Love Peter and Ashleigh x