I'm still here

It's been quite a while since my last blog entry, sorry if you've been dropping round and I wasn't in so to speak.

If you live in Australia you may have heard about a plane crash a couple of weeks ago where an aerobatic Yak-52 crashed into the water off Stradbroke Island. The pilot of that aircraft was Barry Hempel. I learnt to fly at Hempel's Aviation and made a lot of friends there, one of which introduced me to my wife, Donna. Donna and I have even done a couple of trips away with Barry and his family. So you can see how Barry's death was a bit of a shock to us. I was going to write a tribute to him, but everytime I started writing it in my head, it either didn't seem right, or I got emotional. In the end it didn't get written.

Suffice to say, Barry had a huge impact in a lot of people's lives and Donna and I are no different. He'll be missed.

On top of that I've had university assignments to write and animals to feed. Did I say I was bored a few weeks ago?

So here I am, finally getting around to writing again while I sit in a little cabin in Armidale all on my lonesome. Donna couldn't come with me as she's too busy with work and the animals this time.

I'm down here for about twelve days. I've got two residentials, two days of chemistry which I finished yesterday and four days of vertebrate zoology, with a five day break in between.

What do you do when you're far from home in a country town all by yourself? Well normally Donna and I would have probably done a bit of a road trip for a few days, to see some places we haven't yet seen in this area, or even some we have seen. Coffs Harbour is a three hour drive from here and a nice place to visit. Actually, it's probably a nice place to live. where's the fun in exploring without your partner though.

So I'm hanging around Armidale for those five days and just doing little day trips with my camera.









Today was a thirty-five kilometre drive to Wollomombi falls. I've got to do some grocery shopping tomorrow, but I don't know what I'll do the next day. Tamworth is only an hour and a half south of here, so I might visit there again.

In between all this I'm catching up on a bit of reading for zoology and trying not to forget which day is Sunday. so I don't miss Doctor Who.