Northern Rivers update

I can't believe it has already been 6 months. We are in a lovely rented house overlooking our farm. The new phone number is 02 6689 5902. We've had a few visitors - and looking forward to having my Mum over for a month in August and my Aunt in September.

We've had some interesting times settling in, and are extremely thankful for the wonderful friends we already had up here who have been a tremendous help in dealing with some of the issues - we've already tested out the local ambulance service, the local hospital (twice!), the vet, and the ability to get flights quickly for emergency dashes back to Melbourne. All services have passed with flying colours, and in every case our friends have been there ready to step up and help out with looking after kids, driving us to the airport, diagnosing the dog's illness etc etc. My heart goes out to people who have to deal with those things without the support of friends and family. Despite the ominous sound of all of that, we are all happy and healthy, albeit a little overworked right now.

We are so lucky though that our biggest problem is too much work after a move to rural Australia. That work has seen us in Melbourne for a reasonable amount of time, with the only frustration the lack of time to catch up with friends and family while we are there. Rob has done a brilliant job of managing the Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme simulator project - take a look at some of the photos at http://simulator.adas.org.au/ , while I get to spend much of this month down here in Melbourne finalising the training scenarios and software configuration to make it ready to train offshore dive supervisors. So this will be my office for a few weeks (that's James in the picture on the right, trying out the saturation diving supervisor panel):

Again, it's really interesting work, and the team of people we have worked with have made it a real pleasure to be part of this project.

On the side, I've been kicking off an e-learning project and am presenting at an e-learning conference this week. While it is hard to fit it all in, it is great to be doing the type of work I really enjoy.

On that note, I'd better sign out - we're off to visit Rob's family today followed by dinner with friends, so it should be an enjoyable break from the work.