phik

sea urchin fish

short-tail stingray fish

starfish fish

yellow striped fish

silver fish

(complete set)

When this trip was originally conceived, a four-day trip into the Coral Sea — far enough out to experience a Great Barrier Reef that’s still alive — was its centrepiece, and I wasn’t going to let Stuart’s status as a non-diver put me off. It sounds like he had no trouble entertaining himself in the rainforest and shoreline of Cairns.

After a lot of reading and hemming and hawing I ended up going with Taka Dive, and I have no regrets. The crew were personable, entertaining, and professional, and I’d recommend them without hesitation. They took the preservation of the reef pretty seriously, which by now should not surprise anyone.

at Pixie Pinnacle

The weather was superb throughout, with excellent visibility and very little current. I had grown to be less than a fan of diving with larger groups (we were 23 plus crew), but these dive sites were so enormous that there wasn’t any issue.

The two night dives, in particular, I enjoyed much more than my previous night dives. The boat was lit up like the sun (and thus easy to find), visibility was excellent (unlike in, say, the Swan River), and we got away from the big group — this was key. In a big group I find myself spending the entire time trying to figure out which light is my buddy and where the hell he’s going.

Fourteen dives in three and a half days is exhausting, almost too much, eating after every dive because you’re famished, stealing every other surface interval for a nap. It usually felt like I’d just finally gotten dry when the divemaster was getting us riled up about the next site; he was fond of reminding us that we signed up for a dive adventure, not a dive vacation.

They offer a seven-day trip, but four days was exactly enough for me. I think on day five, putting on that wetsuit would have felt too much like work.

Although the weather was good, this was the open ocean, and there were swells of 3-4 meters while we were steaming along overnight. I had prepared for the worst, but in the end it didn’t affect my appetite or my sleep at all. It was for the most part pleasant, like a hammock. There was one person who I think didn’t eat or sleep for two days, just barfed; he was a wreck.

potato cod; big as a man

white tip reef shark

Back on land, it was time to return to reality and plan tomorrow’s flights to Birdsville, in the middle of the Australian nothingness. When you’re flying anywhere in Australia, but especially when venturing out into the vast, empty desert, knowing where you’re going to get fuel is serious business.

There aren’t very many airports between Cairns and Birdsville for a fuel stop, and my original plan, Richmond, is entirely sold out of avgas. Fortunately, Winton — home of Waltzing Matilda and 100nm further south — has 18,000 litres. Tomorrow’s weather does not look encouraging, so we’ll see whether or not we actually get there.

(Complete photoset)

The passenger/freight steamer SS Yongala sank (assisted by a cyclone) in 1911, and as such has had almost a hundred years to amass sea creatures. Like a cat lady, it adopts everything in sight until the house is barely recognizable beneath an accumulated patina, and the malevolent Child Protective Services threatens to take away its children.

Put simply, this is a vessel that requires imagination, because not a single piece of steel remains visible to the human eye. Every millimeter of its former coal-fired glory is now merely a base upon which sea life has taken hold.

As the only reef structure in an otherwise sandy area, the fish life that call it home are many and varied. One side — the boat sank on a bit of an angle — has fewer than the other, which is to say only a few tens of thousands.

The only downside is that it’s a good 50 nm from Townsville, which requires two and a half hours of steaming each way. I could have done this math in advance, of course, but then I might not have gone, so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t. I had planned to dive with a friend of a friend — who, indeed, has a boat! — but a last-minute work obligation scuttled those plans as surely as the Yongala itself.

I am terribly unhappy with the photos, but I learned some important lessons today about lighting, particularly in water as deep as that which the Yongala inhabits. Unfortunately, I learned these lessons in retrospect, which is why most of the photos are so blue and awful. That’s pretty much what it looks like 20-30 meters under, until I get some better lights: blue.

Virtually none of the photographs are worth showing to you, but you can hit the flickr stream if you are so inclined.

When I asked the dive shop in Perth where I should dive on the east coast, at the top of their list was South West Rocks.

Fish Rock is about 30 minutes from shore, and once you’ve moored you’re basically two minutes from wide-eyed amazement. Rottnest Island was pretty; Fish Rock is almost unbelievable. It is extreme.

There’s a gully next to the cave where the nurse sharks hang out during the day; if you hover there in the water, they’ll come check you out with one of their beady, side-mounted eyes. Their big teeth are for crunching bony fish and crustaceans, I am told.

If you get bored with the sharks, you can swim with the giant schools of little yellow fish. They’ll part to allow you through, but don’t expect them to go very far. They’re lazy little fish.

I have no idea what these are called

Traversing the cave itself was an experience, to say nothing of what actually lives within. Its deep end is about 24 meters, the shallow end about 14. In between is a bubble cave, a local maximum that traps all of the bubbles from the divers. Since we consume so little of the oxygen in each breath, it’s quite habitable; you can surface in there and have a little chat.

the shallow end

I haven’t yet learned to photograph in the dark very well. I don’t have proper lights, and a strobe has its own issues. This resting wobbegong shark turned out ok:

do not mess with this shark, it will fuck you up

Fish Rock exceeded my already high expectations. I could spend weeks here, I suspect, and find something new on every dive.

I highly recommend Fish Rock Dive Centre — they were good-natured, professional, easy-going guys, with reasonable accommodation and decent Indian food on-site. South West Rocks Dive Centre didn’t return my call or email, so screw them.

(Complete photoset)

I did my first night dive last night, in the Swan River at the Jerrat Drive wreck site. It was both awesome and mildly (but irrationally) terrifying.

A few dozen meters off shore, there are two wrecks about 10 meters under: a World War 2-era barge and a Chinese junk, both of which have mostly disintegrated on the bottom. Nevertheless, they were teeming with life, filled with blue swimming crabs, Australian spotted jellyfish, and a dozen or more fish that I can’t possibly identify. But mostly it was useful as an orientation to the rigours of night diving.

I was briefly, and for no reason in particular, disorientated when I first reached the bottom and was waiting for the rest of the dive group. Once that passed it was pretty uneventful, although I felt like I spent a lot more time and energy maintaining my buoyancy and keeping up with the group than I did during any of my daytime dives. I assume this is just something I get used to, which is why I wanted to do a night dive or two before my advanced course.

Ah well. My underwater camera and flying kit should arrive on Monday, so it won’t be too much longer before you can skip the prose and get straight to the meat.

I finally got my scuba diving ticket this week, after three weeks’ delay due to unrelenting respiratory illness. I did my final open water dives with a great bunch of guys who work eight-on/six-off fly-in/fly-out shifts in the mines. As someone who more or less sets his own schedule, it will be nice to have other people around who can go diving in the middle of the week.

My underwater camera is still en route from the nifty fifty (thanks joe!), so I don’t have any photographs of my own, but Rottnest Island is popular enough that we can all live vicariously through flickr in the meantime. I’m going to try to get into a group diving on the HMAS Swan at the end of the month, by which time I should hopefully have a reasonable underwater camera.

Also: just in case someone Googles for scuba diving or dive shops in Perth, I want them to learn about Diving Frontiers. They were extremely professional, particularly in the one instance where something went wrong (they accidentally gave me an empty tank, which I only noticed when I tested it that night). It’s the sort of shop where you can call the owner’s cell phone and expect him to solve the problem at 22h.

They were flexible when I got sick; their instructors were clearly very experienced; and they were definitely teachers, not just divers. From my minimal research, they also seem to be the least expensive dive shop in the area, for both equipment and training. Recommended without hesitation.