Paddling Trip! Woohooooo!

Here is the next 6 days road trip! 2100km round trip in a car to go for a paddle it had most certainly better be worth it. To put it into perspective its the same as the car drive from Cherbourg to L'Agentiere and back and we are only going to get maybe 3 or 4 days paddling!

First stop will be the Nymboida Canoe Centre in New South Wales then onto the Penrith Whitewater Stadium outside of Sydney, home of the 2000 olympic games slalom event and the 2005 World Freestyle Kayak Championships. Some where in between there will be an almighty session with Donal Bourke in Sydney and a Diamond Jubilee Ordination Party in Kempsey.

Stay tunes for photos and videos from the trip on our return.

Oh yea joining me on this trip and providing all the accommodation and transport for the trip is C1 legend Niall Quinn. You can check out his exploits on his blog over here.

http://niallochuinn.blogspot.com/

Later!

Queensland Floods of Jan 2010

Here is a small series of pictures (there were many, many more but these 6, I feel, tell the story best) from during the Queensland floods of January 2010. So after several weeks of rains, the ground was sodden ant then a week of severely heavy rains raised the Wivenhoe Dam to unseen levels. Many towns above the dam had already been destroyed but the dam was then at levels previously unseen and a dam that was built to protect the city had no option but to release almost twice the volume of Sydney harbour every hour. The water didn't take long to reach the city ad many low lying suburbs were submerged. The level was expected to surpass the flood of 1976, luckily it didn't. We had expected the water to flood our downstairs neighbours apartment so we moved some of their stuff upstairs to our living room. the rest went to high ground in the adjacent apartments further up the hill. The water never came in but it did flood the sub-ground level carpark. The electricity in the block stayed on till right up until the peak but was then switched off just incase. Niall Quinn and myself decided to stay the night and watch and wait for the peak level. At around 10pm we saw a massive section of floating concrete walk way break away across the river and wash away down stream 3 hours later is would have to be nudged by tug boats to avoid it colliding with the Gateway Motorway Bridge. We night passed and the next day as my work place was now a marooned island I had the weekend off work so I went on a 7hour walk around the city and took some photos (which you see below). It was the first of many disasters to be fall this side of the world in the coming months, it would certainly be the most interesting months of my life from a weather and geology point of view. Our electricity remained off for another 10days and after that electricity and TV were out for two and a half weeks. Things have finally returned to some normality, the cities Ferries and River Cat Buses have returned and temporary stops now replace the ones destroy by the flood waters and debris. I'll add more photos later or upload the lot to a gallery and put up a link. Enjoy

Cork Rodeo 2010 & Solo: Lost at Sea

A couple of short posts today to make up for the recent lack of content. None really big wave related. First up is the edit of all the footage I took at last years Cork Rodeo. I had almost 2hrs45mins of footage in total I would have had more but the camera wasn't rolling for the expert finals. Well here is the final edit with some Irish rap over it by RiRa (look him up). There is some footage audio that makes it onto the final edit after 3:30 (you'll definitely here it!), I don't know where exactly it is coming from at the moment but I'll try to remove it later and make another export. Enjoy!

The second video is the movie "Solo: Lost at Sea". Originally I read about Andrew McCauley in James Cartrission's book "Crossing the Ditch" and while I didn't forget about it, I just hadn't looked it up until I had a few pints with Mr. Paddy McGovern one night over here in Brisbane. Paddy is a couple of weeks away from setting out to paddle around Ireland. While not on a par with the Tasman Sea crossing it reminded me that I needed to look up Andrew's Story. This is a great movie despite its unfortunate end. I found it to be extremely moving and at times hard to fathom the depths of despair and isolation he must have encountered. It must have been tough for his family to decide to release the footage much more to allow it to be made into a movie but I'm sure it's what Andrew wanted. Andrew McCauley crossed the Tasman Sea in a kayak and drowned just 30miles off the New Zealand coast this is the story of his journey and end.