Craig & Sam Down Under

Hi everybody!

Sorry it’s been such a long time since the last post, I like to think you’re all gagging to know what we’ve been up to! A lot of you have commented on how much I type in these comments and you should prepare yourselves for an extravaganza of an entry cuz this one’s gonna be HEOWGE!

I know I titled the last entry ‘Paradise’, but if I’d known then what I know now, I would have saved that title. Basically, you last heard from us when we were in Airlie Beach, overlooking the Whitsunday Islands. Although it was a gorgeous place and we had a fabulous couple of days sitting by the pool in beautiful weather (as well as a tropical storm which uncannily appeared about 10 minutes after I’d finished the last blog saying how hot it was!), we were both a bit miffed cuz the trips to Fraser Island and the sailing/diving trips around the Whitsundays had been so expensive. Last Monday we headed on up to Townsville, the last stop on our list for exploring before we went on to Cairns to start looking for work. Townsville was another day’s drive away and when we arrived we went to the visitor information centre to look for a caravan park to stay on for a couple of days. This is the usual routine for when we go to any new town, the visitor info people are so friendly they always help us get sorted and recommend good places to visit too. It’s always a bit of a struggle for me to drag Craig away from the dive tour stands and concentrate on finding somewhere to sleep, but this time I’m glad he picked up some leaflets!

We found a dive trip that went out on the Tuesday evening for 3 days and 3 nights, on a liveaboard boat which offered 10 dives on the Great Barrier Reef and the S S Yongala, all food and accommodation included in the price plus the opportunity to do our next dive qualification, the Advanced Open Water diver for a bargain price. We signed up on the Monday, were given our theory books for the course and spent all that evening and most of Tuesday swotting up for the course. We stayed on a lovely campsite with a generous receptionist who agreed to let us park the van up in the shade within the van park for free while we were away so we knew it would be safe.

It was about an hour and a half walk into the town and down to the Marina on Tuesday evening, it’s so hot up here even in the evening we were well sweaty by the time we got to town! We went to a sport shop to get Craig some swim shorts for under his wetsuit and the guy gave us a 10% discount, cuz the shorts Craig had picked had no price tag on so we took another pair, the next size up that did have a tag on for him to scan. He was well impressed with us, I reckon those weekends in scratalan must’ve been worth it!

Anyway we got on the boat at 8pm and had a little explore, met our fellow shipmates and had a safety brief and stuff. There were quite a few Brits as well as an American guy who we got chatting to and some other Swedish, Norwegian, Israeli peeps. The boat was called SeaEsta and was very very slow, we set sail at 10.30pm and travelled throughout the night to get to the reef. The next day we did two amazing dives on Wheeler’s reef, another one in the afternoon at a place called the Student Bommie and then returned to Wheeler’s in the evening for a night dive. We learned how to do Drift diving as part of the advanced course here cuz the currents were really really strong, so we had to be taken out to the reef in the dinghy and then let the current carry us back to the boat. The night dive was well scary and not as good as we’d hoped cuz there were quite a lot of us diving all in one group so it was a bit cramped. It was definitely a strange experience and not one I’d like to repeat for a while – I was far too concerned with staying alive and not drifting out to sea to really enjoy the reef at night!

The next day we had moved again to Davies Reef and here we did our Deep Dive for the Advanced course as well as underwater navigation, using a compass (I used my Dad’s compass ‘Bob’ – a faithful friend). Our afternoon dive at a reef called ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ was one of the best so far. The way the Advanced course is set up is so that you do 5 Adventure dives, the Underwater Navigation and Deep Dive are mandatory then you choose 3 more from a list of about 13 others. We had already done the mandatory ones as well as Drift and Night diving and wanted to do Wreck diving on the S S Yongala the next day. The Norwegian girls on the boat wanted to do underwater photography as one of their adventure dives so that afternoon the instructor took them out with cameras and we were left to go diving on our own. I was very nervous about it, but me Craig and and nice Aussie girl called Doreen went out on our own and it was amazing! We used the anchor line off the back of the boat to get to the bottom and used it as a reference point, then we swam around the reef using the current to help us spiral up and up into shallower water until we reached the surface. I had taken a compass bearing from the boat so I knew where it was and when we first reached the bottom, Craig took Bob from me (the compass!) to navigate around the reef. When we surfaced we both knew exactly where we were and the boat was where we expected it to be. Doreen had surfaced facing out to sea and had a little panic when she couldn’t see the boat but we turned her around and were so chuffed with ourselves for finding our way around we were ecstatic! We were even positioned up-current from the boat so we barely had to swim as we let the water carry us to the back of the boat. Fan-bloody-tastic!

We skipped the night dive that evening, all the newly qualified Open Water divers went out and the group was huge so we knew we probably wouldn’t enjoy it, plus we were absolutely pooped from all the other dives. I had been having little naps in between each dive cuz it just wiped me out! That night we moved dive sites again and on friday we dived on the wreck of the S S Yongala. This was the most amazing diving either of us has ever done. It was superb and the absolute highlight of the trip so far. The ship went down in March 1911 and wasn’t discovered until about 50 years later (look it up on Google if you want the whole story – it’s very interesting), it’s not yet known for definite how it sank but it’s now one of the most diverse reefs in the world. The whole ship is encrusted in reef and is home to a vast amount of different species of fish. We saw 2 shovel head rays (stingrays that look like sharks! AAgh!) two turtles, one of which was so big it must have been hundreds of years old, giant maori wrasse and so so many fish you wouldn’t believe. The first dive on the wreck was with an instructor but the second one we did with Doreen again and it was so satisfying. I could never dive again and still be happy that I’ve dived on the S S Yongala. Very happy bunnies all around!

Anyway, we spent a couple of days back in Townsville after that, recovering and sleeping and meeting up with our boat buddies. Now we’ve moved up to Cairns and are looking for work. wish us luck!

Love to all!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2005 at 3:14 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.