Oct 2007

Fraser the Sales Rep for Quicksilver (who reckons he is practically the Mayor of Port Douglas) came to see me while I was working on the boat Monday morning asking if I had any plans for my day off on Wednesday. Of course I didn’t… its Port Douglas. What else is there to do except go to the beach, shop or try and get 3 people on a windsurfer board in a swimming pool?

Anyway, what Fraser was getting at was that Doug one of the Yacht owners in Port Douglas (who every Wednesday afternoon takes a handful of guests out sailing around Port), had somehow got The Great Outdoors to come up and do a story on his Wednesday arvo sailing trips. Fraser being mates with Doug was asked to come aboard and find some people to join him on the boat while the production filmed Jennifer Hawkins doing her story. Our main job was to look like guests on board laughing, drinking and having fun.

When Jen and the camera crew turned up we were briefed on what was going to happen and away we went. They filmed us walking down the jetty at the marina and getting on the yacht. I sat next to Jen on the way out of the marina while another boat with the camera crew circled around filming us. She was really nice and seemed happy to talk to everyone and was asking me what I do for a job in Port Douglas, how long I’ve been here for etc. We then headed back into the Marina and the camera crew jumped on board the yacht to film her interviewing Doug. Us guests weren’t needed in any of these shots so we all sat at the back with our drinks and used this opportunity to take some photos.

After that little segment they filmed us all chatting to each other at the yacht club and that was pretty much a wrap. I think the whole thing took about 2 and a half hours but Jen and the crew stayed for awhile after and had a few drinks with us. She was really friendly, down to earth and seemed quite happy to sit with us and just chill out. Fraser and I got our photos taken with her and then off they went.

After the crew left we all jumped back on Doug’s yacht and sailed out towards Low Isles to see the sun set. He let us all take turns steering the boat and gave us all free drinks and cranked up the music. We got back in to the marina around 7pm and after that I headed to Four Mile Beach for a beach party between the Quickie crew celebrating Dave’s birthday and Toni’s hens night.

This Tuesday is my last day at work and then I’ll have a few days in Port to see some sights, do some packing and figure stuff out for when we arrive in Melbourne. I found out it is actually cheaper for me to fly from Cairns to Brisbane, then Brisbane to Melbourne so I will leave Cairns on the 30th, go back home for the night to change some clothes and stuff over and then reach Melbourne on the 31st. The Pacific crew have their own flights booked so Brian will be heading straight from Cairns to Melbourne on the 31st and we will meet up that night. The boys have a week in Melbourne to get everything sorted before filming starts up again so Brian and I have booked a hotel for that week and will go out during the day looking at places to rent up until June. There seems to be a few furnished apartments close to the studio in Docklands so fingers crossed they’ll all be available when we get there. I’m sure we’ll be right!

• More photos of Jennifer Hawkins and Snorkeling at Agincourt Reef will be gradually added. There was a way to upload the photos in bulk but now it has to be done individually so it might take awhile. Sorry!

Thursday on my day off I went to the doctors to get my cv vaccination (which really really hurt by the way!) and also to get my ‘supposed’ asthma tested so I was able to go diving. I went to go diving AGES ago but I ticked that box to say that I had asthma (coz that it was the Dr told me 6 years ago) so the divers legally couldn’t take me out unless I got it all re-checked. To cut a long story short, I don’t have asthma and I went for my first dive last Friday during my lunch break.

I had to sit down and watch a video first and Matty ran through what to do if your reg gets knocked out of your mouth, you run out of air, and how to equalize your ears. I had Jules as my dive instructor (she’s cool) and once we suited up and got in the water she went through again what to do if your reg falls out and how to clear your mask if it fills up underwater.

After equalizing and slowly heading to the base below us, we all stopped and got to touch ‘Jake’ the Maori Wrasse. He is so awesome and feels really cool. He loves the divers and swims with them everyday, so of course he swam with us for most of our dive. I was in a group of about 5 and the majority of them were rude pushy Americans. Just after patting Jake we were headed to the sea floor but on my way down one of the divers pushed past and knocked the reg out of my mouth. Because we had run through it all on the video, on the boat and in the water on what to do if this happens, I didn’t panic too much coz I knew what I was doing. Jules and Gareth (crew diver who was filming us) grabbed me and helped me put my reg back in. I didn’t realise it was such a serious thing until I saw Jules’ face and how they immediately stopped everything and swam straight to me. I also found out that the dive master got in a fair bit of trouble for it.

Other than that my first dive was pretty cool. I got to touch a sea anemone and see lots if little Nemo’s swimming in it. The anemone feels cool and has quite a dry texture even though it is underwater. I also got to touch a giant clam and a giant sea cucumber which I wasn’t thrilled about doing. I find sea creatures a little too unusual to go around touching. It was still lots of fun and a very good memory to have.

WARWICK COMES TO TOWN (17 Sep – 29 Sep)

It’s been awhile since Jess and I have written on the blog so there’s a lot to catch up on! I’ll start from about 2 weeks ago when my brother Warwick came up to work on the movie.

Warwick had been part of the movie production earlier on and helped out with interviews and cast selection so he was able to come up north and work on set for 2 weeks as part of the marine core. The first couple of days on set was pretty much stand-by and wait to be brought on set to do scenes, so it gave us both time to catch up and time for him to chat with guys he had worked with in past productions. We were lucky enough to do a couple of scenes together side by side. One scene was with us firing on the front line which in rehearsals I had to refresh his memory on firing a rifle as it had been 3 or 4 years since Warwick has used an M1 Grand. The scene was cool cause behind us a marine got his head blown up with brain splatter landing on us and an amputee got his leg blown off.

We talked about doing a scene together like in Saving Private Ryan with the brothers fighting in the war next to each other, so we were lucky enough to pull some strings and make this happen. The scene was with mass explosions with us landing on the beach. We ran from the beach edge up to the tree line with the camera following us from behind while running past guys firing around us, guys getting shot and us crawling and ducking for cover along the way. Warwick was next to me and pulled a stunt guy who had been shot into a bunker, while I was taking cover fire and reloading and then ran straight into a mortar explosion which blew me on to one leg. It was pretty forceful!

Days went by of us lying around as production did close-up shots on lead roles and shot script. The last day on set with my brother saw us laying on the beach firing at a peel-box (a big concrete slab the Japanese were in that has an opening for a machine gun to fire through while sweeping the beach to kill hundreds of marines). I was on the 30-cal machine gun while Warwick was laying a few metres away firing at the Japanese with his rifle. Once I opened up with the 30-cal everyone could hear the velocity of the 200 rounds I had fired within 30 seconds. After they had called “cut” my brother came over and said that his whole body was shaking from the vibrations of my machine gun. It was that powerful.

Throughout the time he was here we hit the pub a few times and went out for dinner plus watched some footy games.

Jess got us both on Quicksilver VIII on one of our days off. It was a pretty nice day, not the clearest of days but still nice and sunny, so the visibility under water was pretty good and we saw lots of fish.

When we hit the pontoon we went on the semi submersible (which is like a little submarine) that takes you on a tour to all the different bombies where they tell you about the coral and fish around the pontoon. After that we went for a snorkel and cause Jess was working that day she was able to join us and go snorkeling on her lunch break. The divers let her borrow an underwater camera which was pretty cool and they then burnt the pics to a disk for us (which we will be adding to the blog!).

We saw lots of colourful fish and were a bit surprised at the colours of the reef. We were expecting the bright colours like you see on TV, but it was explained to us on the sub tour that 90% of coral is brown, green and blue 10% is the more colourful stuff you see on TV. We also got to see some clams, and Jake who is a big Maori Rass that Jess always talks about. He is very large and playful and apparently lets you touch him. After our snorkel we had lunch and enjoyed some free beverages that Jess had organised for us and then headed back to Port Douglas.

The last day that Warwick was here he organised for everyone to get together for dinner at the Hogs Breath Café on the marina. It was a good night with a few drinks had and then we headed to the Courthouse for a few more drinks while watching the All Blacks play Romainia. He then headed back to Sydney the next day to get back to work but we will catch up with him again in Melbourne for the Marine Ball and also in Sydney for Christmas.