I never so much fun breaking my toe!

G'day to all my friends and family :)

I just came off of my 4 day weekend and it was an incredible one! Well, nearly... if you ignore Thursday when I spent the day catching up on house and paperwork.

On Friday I went up to Tablelands to check out a place called Lake Tinaroo; it's a manmade lake created by a dam and was entirely a boring paddle because the lake is surrounded by farm land created decades ago before man figured out clearing the rainforest for cows wasn't such a great idea. But come evening time, I was having dinner and drinks with Kim and Digby at their place on a hill that looks out over the Coral Sea. Kim's an American raised in New Hampshire (Rye Beach - how small a world is that?) and she married Digby, an Aussie she met in the States. It was a wonderful evening.

Saturday was an afternoon paddling Lake Eacham with my friend Jeff, who is over here with his wife Megan - both fellow Americans from NM (I did my undergrad in NM... small world again) doing some studies. He's a geologist and she's an ecologist - and we had an awsome time making our way around the circumference of the lake; so here are some pics:

Lake Eacham is an extinct volcano that is now a lake surrounded by rainforest and the pics you see are: 1) Geologist Jeff, an incredible guy who knows more about reptiles than I ever will, 2) a picture of a female Forest Dragon if you look close enough (click on the pic Meghan :), 3) those big leaves hiding in the vines are those of a Stinging Tree - be careful of these... if you brush against one and get stung by small thorns at the tip of each of the jagged ridges of this heart-shaped leaf, you're doomed to experience muscular and arthritic-like pain for the next 6 to 12 months! and 4) That's me at the base of a really big tree... where's a botonist when you really need one?

Sunday was the most funnest time in a long while when I went white water on my kayak down the Baron River with a couple of experienced paddlers. Bless their hearts, they took their time to explain to me how to best maneuver down each rapid and what to do if I was tossed from my sit-on-top boat. And as promised, they were there to help every time I got tossed :) And in the end, I made it through 2 rapids and got tossed by the others - Doh! But it was an incredibly exciting afternoon. So exciting I didn't even realize I had broken a toe on one of my falls until we were loading our boats back onto our racks. And no worries Pat, we'll be paddling the lakes so you won't be going home with any broken toes :)

That evening was spent with friends having dinner and drinks back home by the Coral Sea... 4 Americans, 2 Aussies, and a hell of a good time!

Anyway, that's my weekend in a nutshell. Life is good and I miss you all back home.

Cheers, Matt :)