The Diveblog

Days 18-21 - Cairns and Surrounding Countryside

I spent the last three days in Cairns and tried to get in some ecotourism in the surrounding countryside of Kuranda and the Tablelands.  The logistics made it impractical to go up north to Daintree rainforest or Port Douglas (gotta save something for the next trip, right?).

We rented a car and the Canadian (Fred) and I headed west to the Tablelands area of Queensland....

Aaaaaah!.....LEFT Fred!....stay on the LEFT!

Just kidding Fred.

The countryside is beautiful and we got in a couple of short rainforest hikes (pretty nice during the dry season!).  Got in some waterfalls, wildlife watching, bird sanctuaries and some really amazing scenery.  And thankfully, at around US$4.00 per gallon, the little Audi A3 we rented just sipped the gas.

The last full day was spent at Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park and gift shopping in Cairns (boomerangs for all!).  The cultural park was interesting, if a little too.....Disney-like.  It was almost too sterile.  I guess the good thing is that its heavily linked with the Tjapukai tribe of Queensland and everything is very authentic.  I learned to throw a boomerang (and caught it, too!...ow!)

More Yongala Pictures

With the time crunch at the end of the dive charter, I didn't get a chance to process the last few dives on the Yongala before coming to port.  So here they are in the continuation:

Day 18 - Kuranda

Lisa, Fred and I discussed renting a car together and driving up to Cape Tribulation today, but we got into town too late to get the car, so we may do it tomorrow.  Kuranda is this old hippie village in the middle of the rainforest.  One of those “must do” experiences from Cairns.  Gondola ride up….touristy shopping…butterfly sanctuary…bird aviary…museum of venom…historic railway ride back.  Pics later.

Day 17 – Travel Day

Caught the 11:15 Greyhound to Cairns along with Fred Parkinson (passenger) and Lisa Moore (the ship’s hostess on our charter).  5 hours on a bus…..groan.  At least the company was great.  Pit stop in Cardwell….thank god!.....OK, bathrooms around the corner…..huh?

Ummmmm……

I’m not quite sure……hmmmm……eenie meenie………

Take a guess and then see the answer in the continuation.

Day 16 – S.S. Yongala and back to Townsville

Two morning dives, just to finish off the trip in style.  Disassemble gear….drag it up to the sun deck to dry….eat lunch….pay the bar tab (ouch!)…pack up…exchange contact info with everyone.  It was a fantastic trip!  The crew was great and the weather was perfect. 

I’m going to cry…..its over…..excuse me….sniff.

Okay, I’m better now.  Off the boat and a bus to the Holiday Inn Townsville.  The sugar shaker….no, really…look at it.  An afternoon of chores: laundry, the call home, mailing stuff I don’t need to lug about anymore.  Then I met up with a couple of crew members who cycled off the boat and some fellow passengers for a fun evening out…Molly Malones, Mad Cow Tavern, etc.

Day 15 – The Wreck of the S.S. Yongala

The Yongala would be the highlight of any dive trip.  She sank in 1911 with the loss of many lives.  Well, read about it here, this internet café charges by the hour and I can’t type very fast.  The plan is to remain here for one and a half days and dive the heck out of this wreck.  I can live with that!  No going inside is allowed (by law)….grumble….oh well.  She lies in about 95 feet of water and is in unprotected waters, so the currents and seas can get pretty extreme.  Not for us, however!  We had a bit of current in the mornings, but the afternoon and night dives were current free.

The most difficult thing about diving this wreck is not straining your neck trying to see everything that confronts you on a typical dive.  The sheer variety of life is stunning.  Multiple types of sharks, rays, turtles, sea snakes, Cod the size of volkswagons.  And that’s just the big stuff.  Also, every dive is unique.  I spoke with people who have been on this site over 100 times and they never get bored.

What’s amazing is that this site is in the middle of nowhere!  Its 80 miles from anything that could even remotely be described as a reef.  Sandy bottom all around. 

Enough yapping.  Here are some pictures in the continuation

Day 14 – Back on the GBR at Anzac Reef and Wheeler Reef

Overnight we moved back towards the mainland and began the day on a large bommie near Anzac Reef called Pride Rock.  Great little dive site to start the day.  (BTW…ANZAC was the acronym for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, which suffered horrific losses in WWI).

Then during breakfast, the boat moved to a dive site called Pelagic Point (still at Anzac Reef).  However, the crew seemed to have a difficult time mooring the boat over the dive site due to the currents, so “back in the dinghies”.  This time we were going to get both a drop off and a pick up.  Good lazy diving….just cruise with the current…..in theory….so long as you’re not trying to stop and take a photo.  So I sucked through the tank a little quickly and was making an ascent to a marker buoy the crew had placed and came face to face with this guy:

I couldn’t believe my eyes…..I had just found a lacey scorpionfish, one of the rarest (and most difficult to find) fish in the Pacific.  I started to yell...and Richard (the trip director) swam over to see if I was in distress.  Then he saw what I was looking at and HE began to yell.  I just snapped away for two or three minutes.  By this time we had attracted a crowd and I retreated and ascended to give everyone a chance to look (not to mention having to deal with my vastly depleted gas situation).  Wow, nothing can beat the thrill of discovery.  I had already seen a Rhinopias (scientific name…sorry) at Pixies Pinnacle on the other charter, but everyone knows about that particular one.  Hell, the crew marked the spot for us.  However, this one was very special for me.

We then moved to Wheeler Reef for the afternoon and night dives.  Here in Australia, Wheeler Reef was in the news recently when a British couple got swept away by the current and it took the Coast Watch six hours to find them (in “shark-infested waters”…I love the press).  Here’s an article.  I don’t think it got much attention in the U.S. however.

Well, there was definitely a current, so it was back into the zodiacs for drop-offs and pick-ups.  Great little dive site with wonderful coral and tons of swim-throughs in the shallows (also a great way to get out of the current, too).  I felt a little cold and planned to skip the second afternoon dive in order to get in the night dive.  However, the current seemed to be strengthening and the crew decided that the latest we could get in was 5pm.  Three of us, the aforementioned Robert Klaffus, Bruce Weitzenhoffer and myself dropped in for the dusk dive.  Great dive….sharks, schools of bumphead parrotfish.  But we flew!  The current was pretty strong.  We came up nearly at the end of the reef.  No worries, however.  The crew spotted us right away and the zodiac was dispatched to pick us up.

Another crappy day in paradise!  More pictures in the continuation.

Day 13 – Dip Reef and Faraday Reef (Still in the Coral Sea)

This was a two dive site day and we started on a dive site called Acropolis.  I’d call this site a kidney-shaped “super bommie”.  You’ll probably only get around it one to two times on a dive.  Lots of great macro photo opportunities and sharks cruising out in the blue.  The top of the reef was at 15-20 feet, so the safety stop was right on the reef….nice. 

However, this was also the first time I began to feel cold in the 77 degree water (despite the 5mm wetsuit).  Its amazing how repetitive dives can sap the core warmth from your body over a few days.  So, I began wearing a 3mm hood on every dive and seeking warmth on the boat (sundeck, hot tea, frequent hot showers). 

At lunch, we transited over to Faraday Reef to dive another “exploratory” site on the opposite side of the reef from the buoyed sites.  Captain Pete (arrgh!) was my buddy for this dive.  The original idea was to dive one of two bommies.  Well, the captain and I strayed away from the bommies and found ourselves exploring a hard coral paradise with forests of staghorn coral in every shade imaginable.  Sharks, rays and swim-throughs galore.  I was so enthralled with the dive that I hardly took any photos.  I just kicked back and enjoyed the exploration.  On the second dive, I jumped in with one of the divemasters, Denis the Scotsman, and we saw a sleeping whitetip reef shark deep in a hole in the reef.  I reluctantly skipped the night dive due to my constant shivering after the afternoon dive. 

This was my favorite site in the Coral Sea and it was named Clancy’s Cluster (or was it “Clancy’s Playground”) after Captain Pete’s daughter.  I have a feeling it will become a regular stop on the Coral Sea itineraries.

Photos in the continuation.

Intermission

Okay, that's enough posts for tonight (scroll down).  I'll be trying to catch up with two to four days of posts at a time over the next couple of days.  Although I love the Inbox Cafe in Cairns (killer music, beer and a very fun crowd), I don't want to spend hours at a time here.  What's cool is that in the week I was away, they installed a wireless hotspot here.  Now I can sit on a couch and update my posts.  Nice.

Here's one more random anemone fish shot:

Day 12 – Flinder’s Reef (continued) and the Scuba Zoo

The first dive today was going to be the deepest of the trip.  We were diving Cod Wall and visiting the biggest gorgonian fan I’ve ever seen.  The dive will be to 130-140 feet and this gorgonian is 14 feet across.  Its so big, I couldn’t get a decent photo of it.  Here’s a much smaller one:

We did another dive on this site and some of the divers saw a hammerhead shark (I didn’t…..poop!).

My last dive of the day was the Scuba Zoo shark feeding dive.  I was unsure whether I would do this dive because of my philosophical aversion to this type of staged event.  I did the dive.  Although the Mike Ball shark dive is probably executed in the best possible manner, I still came away from the dive with a reinforced feeling that this is a misguided marketing gimmick that changes shark behavior and associates divers with food (neither is a good thing).  In gauging the passenger reaction to the Scuba Zoo, I felt that it paled in comparison to the morning excitement over the hammerhead just cruising through Cod Wall.

Some shots of the sharks (all gray reef sharks between 2 and 5 feet long) in the continuation.