Back in August during the Best Expedition in the World the team from Underwater Earth and I headed out with one of Australia’s best dive operators, Pro Dive Cairns, for a live-aboard experience.

I had visions of cramped quarters, ships tack and over-visited dive sites prior to leaving having had that experience in other parts of the world. But after three days living, sleeping, eating and diving with 20 other people I have to say it was simply ‘bloody brilliant’!

Our skipper Warren took us out to some of the best coral reefs I’ve seen. Visibility was excellent, the marine life abundant and the coral was bright, colourful and extensive. Over the three days we visited numerous dive sites, had close encounters with turtles, sharks and bump-headed Parrotfish and went home smiling.

If you want a real Great Barrier Reef experience and love your diving then do yourself a favour, book a place, grab a camera and prepare to be blown away by this adventure.

Richard, Christophe and I were there to film as much of the underwater world as we could. I wanted to produce a YouTube movie about life on a single reef. What would we find? Would there be enough to create an exciting piece? What would turn up to the party?

Here’s the results of a single day filmed at Flynn Reef just off Cairns:

To find out more about this region of the Great Barrier Reef visit here

To read the blog post I wrote about Bump-Headed Parrotfish (possibly the ugliest fish in the world?) click here or to see the photo album from the trip click here

Pro Dive are a PADI 5-Star dive training school operating out of Cairns. Visit their website here

On November 11th public voting closes to decide the New 7 Wonders of the World from 28 finalists. Australia has two of them, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef.

There are some incredible places that we’re up against including Table Mountain, The Amazon and the Maldives. All of which are pretty special places to visit and will get masses of support from voters…but we need your help to keep the Great Barrier Reef in the top rank.

To show how important every vote is, this week I headed out to Vlasoff Cay on the Great Barrier Reef with a polling booth, seven snorkellers, Tourism Australia and a film crew…to set up what could be the most remote polling station in the world!

Andrew Ridley, the co-founder of Earth Hour was there too. His work literally plunges the planet into darkness for one hour every March as companies and individuals turn off all their lights to to take a stand against climate change. As one of the Reef’s Ambassador’s his vote is well and truly behind the reef.

We got great coverage from the Australian media with channel 7,9 and 10 all running news pieces about the stunt. This morning I had to don my indigenously-painted wetsuit for a live cross to the Channel Ten news room in Sydney…all in the name of promotion of course!

So how can you help?

In order to cast your vote visit the New 7 Wonders of the World website by clicking here, choose your top seven (making sure the GBR is one of them) or alternatively you can visit their Facebook page and cast your vote here

Since Sunshine took a battering from some wild weather during our stay at Lady Eliot Island, I have been working furiously to get the Best Expedition in the World back on track.

The BIG4 Cane Village here in Bundaberg has been our home for the last fortnight and I have to say a massive thank you to John and the team here for looking after us. The guys at the Bundaberg Slipway have become our co-workers and friends and yacht Sunshine is almost ready to become Operation HQ once again from where I’ll report as often as I can to bring you a snapshot of life on the Great Barrier Reef.

Since then I’ve been up to Heron Island and shot some incredible images with the crew from Underwater Earth, interviewed some of the great scientific minds working at the research station, been interviewed by radio and television stations from around the world and tried to keep fit by running the streets here.

Mum and Dad have continued their Queensland Road Trip along the coast and have been furiously blogging to bring you their story of life on the road as they explore the state in their Apollo Motorhome and document here on the blog.

Finally the Yellowbrick tracker will be moving in the right direction (north) and as we take photos, post videos and create blogs they’ll appear on the track exactly where they were taken – keep watching this page for the latest updates.

Being able to get back onto the kayak is something I’ve been itching to do and once we make up some of the lost ground I’ll be cutting my paddle through the waves hopefully alongside the migrating Humpback Whales that have already started to appear along the Queensland coast.

So my sincere apologies for a temporary break in transmission…rest assured we are eager to go and working twice as hard to create a wake and bring to life more reef adventures to inspire you all!!

Yours Expeditionally

Ben

It’s merely a cricket’s lifetime away now. Next Saturday, while the Captain Cook Festival is in full swing, the crew and I will be kicking-starting our epic voyage of discovery. We can hardly wait!

But, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. I might have escaped my CBD office, but there’s still a bit to get through while I’m ‘waiting in the stalls’.

International and domestic media are travelling to 1770 over the coming days to investigate, write up, and film Best Expedition related stories.

The similarities between Captain Cook and myself have been particularly enticing for the media. Click here to read the Courier Mail article.

Not only will I be following Cook’s route up the Queensland coast, I’m just as much of an adventure-hungry Pom as he was! I just happened to swap his HMB Endeavour for a state of the art Hobie Kayak, and his telescope for an ocean of modern marine technology.

Just to make sure I can pull this 21st Century challenge off, I’ll be doing some serious Hobie and ‘tech training’ this week. I want to make sure I know what I’m doing and have contingencies in place before I hit the open water.

I’m fairly sure I’ve packed everything the crew and I will need (and stuff we really don’t need). Solar showers, board games, expedition mascots, DVDs, Saya skincare, laptops, 4-months worth of clothing and enough dive gear to sink a ship – I’ve brought the lot…and then some. This is not back packing, this is not flash packing, this is the Best Expedition in the World!

Fingers crossed, everything will fit on the Sunsail support vessel, “Sunshine “, which is currently passing Yeppoon and on it’s way south. I visited Sunshine in the Whitsundays several days ago and kitted her out with a complex interweb of technology – slightly overwhelming stuff, but vital in order for me to run bestexpeditionintheworld.com from the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.

Mum and Dad have also been learning how to master new media technologies. They arrived in Brisbane last week to kick off their ‘Queensland Road Trip‘, which they have started photo-documenting and blogging about on the Best Expedition website. These ‘Grey Nomads’ will undoubtedly get up to some serious fun and mischief over the next few months. I look forward to catching up with them at different points along the coast and hearing ALL of the goss.

Between catch up points, my folks will be able to follow my progress (from May 21st) by taking the odd peak at the live tracking page of this website, courtesy of Yellowbrick. It will update my position every 15 minutes on a Google Map, and feature photo videos, photos, 360° panoramas, and blogs in exactly the same place they were created. Check it out here and join me on the adventure of a lifetime – the Best Expedition in the World!

Yours Expeditionally,

Ben

As with The Best Job in in the World the idea of the expedition is to take the story of the Great Barrier Reef to the rest of the planet; to educate about the life there, to expose some of the incredible locations and to make people just that little bit jealous so they’ll come out and experience it for themselves! My ultimate goal would be to have another television series shot documenting the adventure telling the story of the expedition, the characters we meet along the way and the people who research and protect one of the Natural Wonders of the World. As a bit of a prelude to this TPD Media (who film programs here in Australia such as Queensland Weekender, Great South East and Creek to Coast) and I decided to head out to Lady Elliot Island to film a short pilot episode for a possible series. This meant getting everything I’d expect to have on the expedition…including the kayak out onto the Great Barrier Reef! At extremely short notice the owner of Lady Elliot island and Seair (the small airline who fly to the island itself) Peter Gash managed to find a plane, strip out enough seats to take the 4m kayak and fly us out for a couple of days of filming.

We took with us an old friend and kayaking guru, Eddie Safarik, to shoot some still images and Richard Vevers from Underwater Earth; the company we’ll be working with throughout the expedition to bring you the most incredible images and film footage we can so you can live the adventure from right where you are now – sat at your computer. A really early morning start in Brisbane saw Sophee and I drive down to the Gold Coast and our flight headed straight up into the dark clouds and rain, our light plane being buffeted around by the squally conditions. We’d managed to load the four metre kayak into the plane along with the camera gear and people we’d need to make this event happen; some first time visitors to the island, others have been before and fallen in love with the place. Peter brought the plane to a halt on the rough coral runway after 90 minutes of flying and it was straight into the action – off to the Coral Gardens to have some still shots taken that will be used on the new website, launched later this year. Eddie really had me working it I can tell you; on the beach, in the water, sailing, paddling and even some really cool underwater ones too.

Next stop was the filming of an episode of Queensland Weekender (the show goes to air on Saturday 26th March on Ch7 here in Aus). Dean Miller the host wanted to know all about the Best Expedition so I took him diving, had a walk along the beach and out on the water to demonstrate how I’ll be moving up the coastline from May through September using my Hobie.

We then headed out onto the dive boats, donned our dive gear and into the water with Richard and Christophe from Underwater Earth. They’ll be coming along at key times during the expedition to help us film THE most amazing underwater sequences that will bring to life what happens on the Great Barrier Reef. The underwater scooters we used have been developed as prototypes to see how the footage looks before the real things are built in the next few weeks. This part of the project is particularly exciting and we hope to bring you a world first very soon. Watch this space…

Mother Nature gave us the complete run down of what to expect from the weather whilst out there with strong winds, driving rain and then an hour later totally blue skies and sunshine, something I have to be very prepared for, come May 21st. Next stop, a two-day test voyage to Tangalooma Resort on Moreton Island onboard the Hobie kayak. We intend sailing the 42kms in a day, stopping overnight to film the dolphin feeding and sailing back the next day. It’s all starting to get a little real now!!

Yours expeditionally Ben

In May 2011 I will set off on a 1600km expedition along the Great Barrier Reef from the Town of 1770 all the way north to Cooktown winding my way through the islands and along the reef. My ‘Voyage of Discovery’ will retrace the route taken by the original English adventurer and seafarer Captain James Cook who navigated and charted the waters of the Coral Sea back in 1770.

He took just over three weeks to travel the length of the Queensland coastline. I will be taking just over three months.

I’m not trying to set any records for endurance, distance or speed but instead embarking on the journey to investigate the care-taking of this incredibly beautiful underwater environment I’ve been lucky enough to witness first hand during the six months of the Best job in the World.

This is the about bringing the encounters and experiences that I witness to you through my new website, as well as the usual Facebook and Twitter channels. You’ll be able to track my progress in real-time and see where we are on Google Maps, watch movies and video-blogs of the adventure as it happens both above and below the water.

Originally I was going to paddle the entire way in a sea kayak but have now settled on a much better way of going about things. I’ll be using a Hobie Adventure Island that can be paddled, peddled or sailed meaning I can travel between locations much quicker and if heaven forbid I became injured, I’d still be able to continue on the journey using a different means of propulsion. SunState Hobie have been kind enough to supply me with the vessel and my training can now start in earnest as I learn to handle it in all waters. Mal Gray from SunState Hobie has come on-board by supplying the vessel and I can’t thank him enough for the support.

Keith Roberts of Whitsunday Catamarans has been kind and brave enough to offer one of his fleet, a 40ft Lagoon Catamaran named ‘Whitsunday Blue’, as the support vessel and to come along on the adventure as the skipper. The project needs someone with Keith’s knowledge, experience and adventurous attitude to ensure that is works and I’m indebted to him for the commitment.

To run a website that’s as up-to-date and informative as I’m planning will require a pretty impressive office setup in order to create, edit and update all of the information we’ll be collating. The support vessel will be exactly that, a base where I will work every day to provide an online story of the adventure with blogs, photos and videos.

In order to understand the Great Barrier Reef a little better and to help see how human-kind is changing such a sensitive eco-system I will be working closely with GBRMPA (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) and Reef Check, a research charity who study and help look after coral reefs around the world. We will dive in lots of different locations as we go, researching and recording everything that we find. This data is then used by the clever people, scientists and boffins who can make sense it and educate people and ultimately protect one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

The project was launched on Wednesday and we’re already getting some good media coverage with clips on Channel 9, 10 and the Today Show (see below) along with the print media really getting behind the project. My friend Alice Tsou from Taiwan was straight onto it with a blog post too!

But this is now where the really hard work starts. We need to organise logistics, itineraries and expedition partners to help fund the expedition, so if you are a company or individual who’d like to get involved please contact me at Tourism Queensland via the link on this page – I look forward to hearing from you!

Stay tuned as things develop, I’ll be updating the website as often as I can.

Ben

Having fought my way through the minefield of adverts and booking agents I worked out there is in fact only one operator who leaves the Shelley Beach harbour and heads out to Protea Banks – rocky reef around 7.5 kms from the coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

The reef is a series of caves which sit up from the ocean floor offering shelter from the currents for the resident sharks which change throughout the seasons. Hammerhead, Tiger, Great White and Reef Sharks frequent the area but at this time of year we are only likely to see Ragged Tooth – oh well better than nothing I suppose!

The weather on the morning of the dive was just about perfect. With no wind for the two days leading up to my morning meet, the ocean was perfectly flat with just the usual Indian Ocean swell rolling in from the east.

As we pulled into the carpark ‘African Dive Adventures’ inflatable the ‘Black Pearl’ was easy to spot on the trailer with our dive tanks stacked around and a few guys wrapped up warm against the morning chill.

Roland, the Divemaster, was there to welcome me and introduced Kyle our skipper and the other 3 divers for the trip. Is that it? Just six of us! I’d expected a boat-load at least. Oh well less people in the water has to be better…or does that increase the probability of being eaten!?

Once I’d found some kit that a) fitted and b) worked with leaking air (a little worrying!) we loaded it all onto the boat and walked down to the water’s edge. It’d be too much weight for us all to launch from the trailer so we walk into the shore-break and climb onboard there…or that’s what they tell us, personally I think it’s just to make sure we’re all awake!

Kyle times the launch and then powers the Black Pearl through the incoming waves and we head out into open water, the sun’s rays just starting to warm the side of my face as it breaks the cloud on the horizon for the first time today.

Its quite deceiving you know; back on the shore the waves seemed pretty small and there was hardly any surf, but out here the rolling ocean swell is much more noticeable and our little boat seems dwarfed as we pitch up and down.

Once we reach the dive site there are three other boats out here already, fisherman all out with the early worm hunting for that elusive game-fish which are common in these waters too. But were not here for such small fry, oh no this is shark territory!

Roland runs through our safety procedures and announces we’ll be dropping straight down to nearly 40 metres below the surface to maximise our bottom time and our interaction with the beasts below. This could be interesting –I haven’t dived this deep for a few months and hope my ears hold up with the pressure.

Camera at the ready, masked prepared, regulator in? With a quick backwards roll I hit the water and start to descend. Passing 5, 10, 15 and into 20 metres of 24c Indian Ocean which as first glance looks pretty murky. Not ideal.

Dropping this quickly and trying to keep up with the group needs constant equilisation so I’m wiggling my jaw and filling my nose to clear the pressure in my ears almost every other second. We finally start to level out around 35 metres and for the first time I can have a look around at my surroundings.

The water down here is much clearer than up high, it appears we’ve dropped through the algae and plankton that’s above and entered the colder, clearer waters below with visibility up to around 25 metres.

The bottom is mainly rock interspersed with sand and compared to the Great Barrier Reef pretty devoid of life…maybe I’ve just been spoilt over the last few months! There are fish swimming around with a few colourful stripy ones being particularly curious of my camera.

But were not here for the small stuff – we’ve come here to see Ragged Tooth sharks who rest up here on the ocean floor during the daylight hours after a hard night hunting their prey!

As we swim over an opening in the rocks I see for the first time the entrance to the first cave and the familiar outline of sharks below. My heart rate starts to quicken…

Following Roland’s lead we descend into the cave and as my eyes adjust to the darker conditions I start to make out the outline of loads and loads of them – there must be at least 30 Raggies all congregating here!

Once I’m on the bottom I notice my breathing has accelerated in anticipation and I deep breath to bring it back under control – I do not want to run out of air too quickly, this experience is amazing.

As I film the larger of the sharks become more active and start to swim over and around us taking large circling routes above our heads which makes great pictures but also raises the stakes of the game slightly. This is what you’ve come here for Ben so enjoy it.

Ragged Tooth aren’t known for their man-eating abilities but at this stage that doesn’t matter – when these 3 metre creatures come within a few centimetres of you their huge rake-angled teeth look pretty damn mean I can tell you!

We sit on the bottom and watch for a few minutes and the sharks swim around us, checking us out, sizing us up or maybe just trying to get slightly further away from these weird bubble-blowing objects sat in their midst.

With more still to see and a ten minute decompression stop still to do Roland leads out of the cave and across the reef to another entrance, this time a swim-through. We descend into the darkness and follow each other through a small, restrictive tunnel – if your claustrophobic this is definitely not for you!

As we break the other end we enter another cave, this one slightly deeper and on the bottom there are our carnivorous friends again, about 20 of them circling slowly in the weak neap tide current below.

There are very few other fish around, probably a good thing if you’re the prey of a shark I know, but its very noticeable and some say that the area has become too popular with local sport fisherman or maybe its just the lull before the storm of the Sardine Run which starts in a few weeks time.

This incredible spectacle transforms these waters into a massive feeding pot for a few weeks every year as the migrating sardines moving from the cooler water off the Algulhas current enter the warmer waters of the Benguela current and come inshore. In fact so inshore that millions of the tiny fish actually beach all along the Kwa-Zulu Natal coastline much to the delight of local fisherman who net them, the birds that attack from above and the game-fish, dolphins, sharks and whales who reap the rewards from below. It is truly awesome.

Having spent around 25 minutes in the bottom at 35 metres there is a long decompression stop to do on our ascent so we leave the cave and head back up towards the sunlight above. The murky waters above are actually quite interesting when you have to hover and wait in them for ten minutes. The plankton, tiny creatures and jellyfish all swim about on their own little missions and its interesting wondering what they are all about – or maybe I’m feeling narc’d after the dive!

Once we’re back on the boat, de-kitted and warmer Kyle starts the engines and we turn back to the mainland. We didn’t get to see a Tiger or a Great White but we did have around 70 Ragged Tooth’s and I’m happy with that for my first real shark dive.

On the way back we get just one more little bonus as a school of dolphins race along in the waters next to us just in the range of my camera. Perfect.

It was great to finally have the chance to dive in South African waters after coming here for so many years on holiday but without a PADI qualification and the day delivered exactly what it promised. It will be great to get back to Australia and see the multitude of life that is there on the Great Barrier Reef but for now I have whetted the appetite to dive with sharks.

Now, where can I find some bigger and more deadly ones…

Ben

So i’m off to my old hunting ground, South Africa and there’s a few different reasons I’m heading back to the country where I earnt my Southern Hemisphere Wings….

a) a couple of weddings first in Port Edward and one later on in Pietermaritzurg – Katie Vorster who I first met in 1997 when I came out to Port Edward and then my friends Patrick and Sarah who I met whilst travelling down through Africa in 2008 during Afritrex

b) to dive with sharks off the Aliwal Shoal and Protea Bank sites off the east coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. It should be a good time of year to witness some of the Tiger Sharks and maybe even a Great White or two!

c) to enter and complete the Comrades Ultramarathon. I’ve been training as hard as I can whilst home in Brisbane and I’m hoping that I have enough practice km’s in my legs to carry me through to the finish of the Comrades in Durban. The course this year is 89.28kms long and is the ‘downhill’ and in most people’s eyes that the easy way……oh no it’s not! The constant smashing of the knee and ankle joints resulting from running downhill for up to 12 hours make it THE most difficult of the two I can guarantee that!

Here’s the route map and one of the profile showing the Big Five Hills! :

d) to present to a number of organisations around Durban all about the Best Job, and

e) hopefully take in a World Cup football game, ideally Australia v’s Germany in Durban

And I know I’m on holiday but I have the overwhelming urge to continue to blog about the experience but obviously I won’t be updating the www.islandreefjob.com website as it’s not Queensland related…but I have all of my cameras with me ready to record everything I get involved in.

Bring on the race, the sharks and the football!

Over and out for now

Ben

Irukandji jellyfish are tiny and extremely venomous jellyfish that are in the tropical waters of the Queensland coast between early October and May, and which cause symptoms collectively known as Irukandji syndrome. Its size is roughly no larger than a fingernail of an adult’s little finger.

I was enjoying a post Christmas jetski session with some friends at a quiet beach on Hamilton Island and as I climbed off the back of the ski and onto the beach felt a small bee-like sting on my forearm, I didn’t think too much of it at the time as it disappeared very quickly and left the beach to head to a sports massage appointment I had.  As I arrived I noticed that my feet and hands were tingling slightly and before I started my treatment commented on the chain of events which had led to this – the member of staff immediately suggested that I get the symptoms checked out and within minutes had the islands security there to escort me to the doctor’s room, only a few hundred metres away.

I was feeling pretty hot and sweaty, had a headache and felt pretty sick too, together with pain in my lower back and a tightness in the chest and a really high blood pressure – all classic symptoms of Irukandji syndrome! This was not what I’d wanted at all and had caught me little off guard to say the least – I’m supposed to be relaxing in my last few days on Hamilton Island.

The doctor knew instantly what it was and straight away started the course of treatment to get me on the mend, I had a couple of injections which immediately took away the uncomfortable pain I was feeling and I slipped into a comfortable sleep after an hour or so, waking to say hello to a couple of friends who arrive to see if I was ok! Bre was there the entire time tending to me like a little Florence Nightingale!

Once I’d recovered sufficiently I was discharged that evening and allowed to go home to sleep the effects off and only really knew what had happened when Bre told the full story the next morning – I had been very lucky.

I’d had a minor brush with what can be a very serious jellyfish and has led to people being hospitalised for a number of days, my slight knock was enough to tell me that it’s not something to be messed around with and I really should have been wearing a full stinger suit, as it recommended at all beaches here at this time of year…even if you’re in the water for just a couple of seconds as I was!

This is what I should have looked like:

Bre headed back to Canada for a member of her family’s wedding a few weeks ago and will be back out here in a few days time so we can get back to having the crazy adventure and fun we have in this particularly mad time in our lives. It’s easy to have the experiences by yourself but it means so much more when there’s someone special there to do it and remember it with you. See you at the end of the month Brester!

Since my last post here on the site I’ve been getting bang up to date with my diving qualifications and am almost all the way through my PADI Advanced diver course. I racked up 25 dives and all have been in different locations so there no getting bored with the same sights every time for me – Heron Bommie, The Cod Hole, S.S. Yongala, Wheeler Reef are all rated amongst some of the best in Australia and I feel privileged to be under the water in some of these locations and frequently have to pinch myself to realise it’s actually happening.

I’m typing this from onboard the Fantasea launch which is taking me across to the mainland where I’m joining up with the crew from catamaran ‘Emperors Wings’ where I’ll be for three days between the middle and outer reef taking in some more of the marine world which has hypnotised and keeps taking me back for more, I have eight dives during my time onboard and should return to Hamilton Island as a qualified Advanced Diver.

It’s something that a few years ago I thought I’d never do having lost a best mate to a diving accident back at the turn of the century but it made me realise that life is out there for living and if you don’t do these things you miss out for good…I am so glad that I learnt last year in Lake Malawi and thank you so much to Sandy from Aqua Africa for getting me through that terrifying mask-clearance session, I thought my days were numbered.

From there I head to Long Island and the Peppers Palm Bay resort which is another couples retreat – not that good as my girl is away in Canada still but the chance to get onto the water in a kayak or catamaran should never be missed and I’ll be out there as often as I can.

It’s then back to basics as I return closer to home and have two days camping and exploring Whitsunday Island and aim to reach the highest point, Whitsunday Peak, at 435m as bit of training for the Hamilton Island Triathlon at the end of November.

A little concerned about this as it’s my first multi-discipline event and will be in front of a big crowd  making it all the more important not just to turn up for the wooden spoon! It consists of:

• 750m Ocean Swim
• 20km Bike Ride
• 5km Run

I don’t have a problem with the running or swimming it’s just the bike ride so Steve from the gym on the island has kindly lent me his bike to train on but oh my god how Hamo’s hills kill you! I did do the ‘Run the Whitsunday Great Walk’ at the weekend, a 28km undulating track through the forest finishing in Airlie Beach, and now two days later feel fully recovered…surprisingly! The only thing that is suffering since I got this job is my fitness, having no routine has really knocked it back so I find I’m getting up earlier and earlier to train leaving the house well before the sun comes up but it does make a great way to explore a new destination when I arrive there.

My thoughts are firmly focused on what I’ll do after the Best Job has finished in January and I have a very important meeting with Tourism Queensland to discuss my next endeavour which is more than likely going to be an expedition to kayak the length of the Great Barrier Reef in on of these little beauties. Suffice to say there is still a huge amount of planning and preparation to be done and from previous experience (www.afritrex.com) I know that it won’t just happen overnight.

Hopefully my choice for next year's project

I will try to retrace Captain Cook’s route along the inside of the reef from south to north to utilise the trade winds which blow during July and August, the only feasible time to do it as the temperatures are bearable then. Several people have already expressed an interest in joining me for legs of this adventure and if you have any similar thoughts please get in touch – you never know!

As I pull into the harbour and start another fun-filled chapter in life may I wish you well wherever in the world you’re reading this from.

Ben