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

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

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

Still loaded and prepared from last weekend’s exploits up in Scotland at the LAMM; Jon, Paul and I left in the Colonel (my trusty Land Rover and home for all of 2008) on Thursday and headed down the A303 towards the west country ready for a weekend of ocean based activities.

There’s something great about going away on a mini adventure even if its just for a few days; the long drive, the camping, the little country lanes, the sounds and smells of the ocean and the countryside are all a welcome reminder that you’re somewhere different that needs exploring!

Six hours after we’d left we dropped down the final descent from St Keverne into the sleepy hollow of Porthkerris where Dave and Turkey live to find their perfect little world exactly as I remembered it….but this time with Turkey running the catering wagon, flippin‘ burgers, blending cheese and generally amusing the locals with his own brand of questionable humour!

Being able to take time out from a hectic lifestyle is essential and something I really don’t do enough of; its only when I get the chance to breakaway and head to one of the more remote parts of the country that I actually realise its good for the human soul to rest up, relax and let the sound of the ocean massage the brain into a trance like state – a one of the first real
opportunities to think about the job as the Island Caretaker.

Inside the head of me…..

Since May 6th back on Hamilton Island when Anna Bligh made the announcement that I’d won the job with Tourism Queensland life has been even more hectic than normal. I thought I used my days up pretty productively, planning a festival, plotting the next expedition and in between all of it trying to keep as fit as possible…but this has turned even my energetic lifestyle on its head.

Every day I talk to someone new, every day there’s a different person contacting me from a another country and its truly amazing to have the chance to speak to everyone of them. We have a chuckle at each others accents, we struggle to understand each other sometimes and very often the time zones of the world just aren’t taken into account as my phone rings deep into the night waking me as I dreamily ponder what the next few months will bring; adventure, the ocean and a vast amount of discovery.

As I count down the final days to my departure from these shores the last week has provided me with an interesting insight into just how the press can work, I have the deepest sympathies for some of the ‘real’ celebrities out there and can now understand how they have to watch everything they say just in case its taken the wrong way, let me explain….

Situation is this – I meet up with a good friend Ben Patterson on the way back from Scotland who’s organised a meeting with a lady from the Press Association. We take a few, photos on the beach where I used to go as a child on holiday as a bit of promotion for the tourist industry in the north east (Bamburgh, Northumbria), she asks me a question….

“What will you miss about the U.K.?”

I answer as honestly as I can…..Mum’s Sunday roasts, long summer’s days, music festivals – genuine answers to a genuine question.

However the way the Sun newspaper in the UK and several in papers in Australia decided to take the answer in a slightly different way and labelled me the ‘Whingeing Pom’ – brilliant and totally taken out of context. Oh you gotta love the media. Have a look here and here for my response a day or so later….yet more laughs!

Those good bods at Tourism Queensland are right behind me though and came back at the papers with their total support for me in a few articles which followed up on the story, a taste of things to come I think.

As I sit here in my hotel room, having just come from Talk Sport Radio where I was a guest presenter for an hour on Ian Collins show, I’m thinking about the amazing opportunity ahead and the incredibly exciting six months of adventure and experiences which lie ahead.

The clock is ticking and the final week here in the UK is going to fly by, I have two full-on days of promoting the BBC documentary (which is out on July 2nd, 9pm BBC1) to come next week, an evening meeting the Governor of Queensland and then two days to pack everything I need into my bags before hopping on a plane to the other side of the world again where I’ll meet my girlfriend Bre and move into the Blue Pearl residence under the watchful eye of the assembled world media once more! I cannot wait.

The limited details I’ve been given so far of the first six weeks of the job look jaw-droppingly exciting…diving at Cod Hole on Lizard Island being one of the obvious highlights as I try and dive as often as possible in an effort to get my Advanced PADI certification, I really want to dive on some wrecks and to do that I’ll have to pass another course but they’re all things which I look forward to …maybe with the exception of sitting another exam!

This week has been particularly busy with three full days of interviews and appointments, I’ve tried really hard to give something back to the younger people in my area by organising some presentations at local schools, visiting my old primary school where I went for a year at the age of 10. It was so amusing going back to Ropley School and seeing quite how its changed, the secretary, Mrs Price, is still there and very kindly showed me my excerpt from the year book of 1986 along with a very embarrassing picture which the children all laughed at as only they can!

My 20 minute presentation told them all about last year’s project Afritrex along with a little glimpse of what the Island Caretaker role will involve over the coming six months. Its amazing how different and almost nerve-racking it is presenting to 100 children….but they listened like mice and ooo’ed and ahh’ed in the right places as I showed them pictures of the African wildlife. A very rewarding experience all round.

On a bit of a roll I repeated the presentation to Liss Junior School this week, but this time there was the added pressure of addressing 250 children whilst being filmed by a French TV crew from the TV1 channel. It doesn’t get much tougher than this.

Nicholas and Arnaud are filming a short feature for a current affairs program which goes out late in July and for their take on the story had me swimming in the Solent, chatting with friends Paul and Rachel over dinner and even came with me as I recorded the voice-overs for a BBC program called Inside Out, which I guest presented and goes out in September. Its been a busy week.

I have to mention another local adventurer from the Petersfield area where I live, Tom Heal who together with his good friend Will Smith who leave the UK at the end of the year in an attempt to become the youngest team ever to row an ocean. Find out more and support them at http://www.atlanticrowyt.co.uk/

We spent an amusing hour together having some photos taken for Life in Petersfield magazine around the lake in our fantastic home town! Best of luck to them both with their fundraising and training. Arghhh hours on the rowing machine – my least favourite item in the gym.

Being my final weekend in the UK I’ve organised another farewell party at the Mill Tavern, which people are welcome along to if your in the area, and then the countdown really is on….

In a week’s time I’ll be flying out to Brisbane to start a new job

AND I CANNOT WAIT WAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!