Croikey, Steve Irwin passed away today after being stung close to the heart by a stingray, causing a cardiac arrest. He was diving off of Port Douglas, and was transported to Cairns Hospital following the accident. Love or hate the guy (I kinda thought he was a goof), it's sad that he died and I feel bad for his family.

As for me, it has been a strange day. Following an unexpectedly late night, I was in lounge mode, until the realization that I only have two days left in Noosa Heads forced me to get active. I booked a surf lesson with Merrick's Surf School, and headed down to Main Beach to hit the waves. It turns out that my pretention of having windsurfed and snowboarded for many years didn't help me, at least not today. No, today was all about paddling, relaxing, and catching the wave. Towards the end of two hours I was successful in getting up about 1 in 4 times, and it is good to know that running down small children has much less dire consequences with a foam board in the ocean than Mach 10 on a snowboard on the hill. I was particularly stoked about one of my runs when I first heard the rumour about Steve Irwin.

The media here are running tributes non-stop, and word has it there will be a moment of silence tomorrow. The hostel has a weird quiet vibe, but I don't know if that is because it's Monday and, well, last night was a late one. An extra spin of weirdness for me personally is that I was in Las Vegas (for my bro's wedding, and a styley Elvis he makes) when Roy got munched by the tiger, and I remember word of that first spreading around the swimming pool.

Above is a pic of Rocky Beach on Maggie, good for solitude, rock crabs, watch destruction (yeppers, this one didn't even last a month - I guess it warn't waterproof afterall.), and stars 'n' Mars watching. The next cove over was my hostel.