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Published: October 27th 2007
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What can we say about the Great Barrier Reef?
Since or last blog entry we have been spending our days swinmming in the man-made lagoon at the beachfront, and our nights catching up on movies and generally lazing about. Yesterday however, we got on board an original Pearl-Lugger built in 1956 in Broome, Austrailia. The vessel was entirely built of wood, one of the oldest boat in the harbour and the pioneering charter to the Great Barrier Reef.
The crew consisted of Dougie, an American salty-dog who grew up in the Bahamas and an East-London padi instructor. We left our mooring at nine in the morning and proceeded north-east into the Coral Sea. The voyage was smooth as the wind was completely absent and the water calm. Gemma's fear of boats has been put to the test on our trip so far (this boat was no exception!) but to be fair, she is steadily getting used to it!
One of the most impressive parts of the trip was watching the water change colour from a mirky green-brown to a deep saphire-blue and then to an amazingly clear baby-blue, turquoise as we neared the end of our eighteen nautical
Colonial Style
Cairns City Council mile cruise.
Now comes the hard part, attempting to convey the stunning world we were lucky enough to have been guests in for a short, but amazing period of time.
We were fitted with our snorkelling gear and then it was go - jump off the boat and (finally) into the crystal clear waters of the (Inner) Great Barrier Reef.
The mryiad of colours is the thing that hits you first, irridescent blues, purples and greens shimmer off of the coral and fish in colours you only think exist in aquariums. We had bought an underwater disposable camera and Craig turned into David Bailey, dissaperaing off chasing fish to get the perfect shot, which is harder than you might think when you are wearing a goggles as you bring the camera to your face only to whack the to plastics together and by the time you have recovered the fishes have no doubt dissappeared into a coral cave......with one exception, as you will see in the pic. Craig had spotted a particilaly big specimin nad gave chase, as we expected the fish in question began to flee, but then obviously decided that he was on home turf and whipped
Mwah ha ha
We found where those pesky bats roosted!! around to face his enemy head on. Needless to say we both nearly drowned laughing at the boldness of this bossy fish!
The time when you are in another world seems to fly by and we were woken from what seemed like a dream by the Captain yelling that lunch had been served on board so we dutifully plucked ourselves from the ocean and chowed down!!!
A ten minute cruise after lunch and we were moored off off Upolu Cay ( A Cay is basically a sand bar that at low tides is exposed and makes itself available to sunbathers and snorkellers alike) Whilst we waited for the tender to take us over to the Cay we were told we could fed the lunch scraps to the fish that had gathered under the boat, it was absolutley incredible watching the silverey white Wrasse's competing for the choice morsals and devouring entire chicken drumsticks as they slid over each other and often out of the water - Amazing.
Once we reached the Cay it was off again to the reef and hunting for fish....we found Nemo, and on one of his many plunges to the bottom Craig found
two stingrays hiding out under rocks. We had about 30 mins to ourselves before we had a guided swim back to the boat, on which the dive instructor found a deep sea giant clam which was obviously too much for Craig to resist having a poke and prod at....much to the clams obvious disgust as it clamped itself tightly shut! ( I am being told to add the depth at which the poor clam was minding its own business.....6 meters)
After reboarding the boat we started on a leisurely sail back to Cairns Marina under half motor and full sail power, during which the Captain reaccounted the Ships history from its original days taking out free-diving pearl hunters, up until its current day job of ferrying eager divers to the fantastic reef.
All in all an awe-inspired day, with only the regret that the photos we developed do not show the reef to its full potential, but we plan to hire an underwater digital camera for our next trip into the deep.......
Today is our last full day in Australia as tomorrow we have a mission and a half, an early start flying from Cairns to Sydney, and
Geckos Backpackers
The longest we have ever stayed in one spot - 8 days! then Sydeny to Kuala Lumpar. We both can't quite believe that we have to say goodbye to Australia so soon, but equally we cannot wait to discover Malaysia and Thailand.
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