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Published: August 13th 2006
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I am 25. It blows.
OK, well it is not that bad, but really feeling like I will be as old as my dad soon (sorry pops) and would so much rather be 18 again. The day started off fairly badly. It is the first time ever that I thought I would be guaranteed sunshine on my birthday - I am in bloody Queensland for gods sake. Wrong. I woke up to thundering rain on the window. Great. This was not made any easier by mum ringing with tales of 36 degree heatwaves for weeks on end in London. Not fair. Plus the boys in my dorm were really smelly. I ALWAYS end up with boys in my dorm and not even nice ones at that.
Present time was way more pleasing though. Bless Andrew. He really knows how to cheer me up with a Birthday pressie of OK magazine and an English edition at that! Awesome! AND a cake made of ice cream. Did I mention we are off to Bali aswell!
Anyway, magazine read and a couple of birthday purchases later (more bikini's I am afraid. Trying to beat your records julie) I realise that I
am still 25 and that is not good. I am like a quarter of a century old for heavens sake. So, what does one do when one feels like this...... go to a bar which makes Hombres de Baya Nightspot in Oxford Street look like the Ritz and get wasted on absynthe. Luckily, we have travelled up most of the coast with 2 trusty friends, Dan and Tom from Fraser island, and also bumped into some girly friends of mine. All of whom were happy to head out to ease my pain.
Now the last words I remember saying were "Andrew don't let me get too drunk, we have to get up at 5am to go diving". The next thing I remember happening is waking up at 4.59am saying "Andrew where am I", and apologising to my fellow bunk bedders as I ran to the toilet to barf up the contents of my stomach. With big black sunnies and last night's outfit (mini skirts are not considered the norm on dive boats), I boarded a boat bound for the Great Barrier Reef to begin my advanced diving course. Things were not eased when the fellow divers started to smell
the drink and the instructors informed me that I would not be diving the initial dives. Ooops! At least the chef on board was on my side and sat me with my face around an oxygen tank. It did wonders and after lunch I donned the wetsuit and jumped in. I am still 25 though...grr!
11 dives in 3 days is no joke, especially considering that it takes 3 hours to get out there and back. Did I mention that even though I was blind on the way out I was the only passenger who was not sea-sick. Get me! Anyway, I digress.
Unfortunately, we were still amidst the bout of bad weather on the Coast and although the water temperature was a balmy 26 degrees the on deck temperatures were way below that. Only a brief surface interval and a shower time of 3 mins every night is not sufficient to warm your core! One hour between dives is nothing as by the time you take off your kit, have a wee out of your wetsuit and log your dive it is time to jump back in again.
I was also doing my advanced course which menat
that for the first 5 dives for me were pretty intense with a lot of theoretical bollocks chucked in and not the cruisey diving Andrew had. It was worth it though as I am now an advanced diver. This means that I can dive wrecks and the like at a much greater depth. Kind of cool I guess and at last I have a hobby I can put onto my CV!
The reef was so much better than we were expecting. We had heard a lot of negative feedback about how damaged it was from the tourists touching the coral etc and the lack of fish life but we were not disappointed. I think it helps that we were lucky enough to be out of the day tripper zone and onto the outer reef where only the liveaboards can go. We had a great time and learned so much. The geography of the reefs meant it was easy to self navigate between the bombies and the reef wall made for some great diving. Plus, with free use of dive computers etc it made us pretty self sufficient on the scuba front and having completed my course I am a
lot more confident about throwing my gear on and going down to 30 metres. The Night dives were a little bit more scary to say the least and, unfortunately, were a compulsory part of my course. I am still convinced that there is nothing normal about scuba diving, let alone jumping willingly off the back of the boat into deep dark water in the pitch black armed with nothing brighter than a penlight practically. I mean they could have sharks. One of those Great White things might just migrate up the coast from Adelaide or something!
In actual fact it was pretty cool and the sea looks a lot different at night, unsurprisingly. Lots of different fishlife and some sleepy turtles to bump onto made for some interesting logging on our books. To be honest Andrew is much more at home with stuff like that, I am still relatively wimpy, so I am not sure I would relish going out at night again but we will sea! Probably the best dives were the dawn dives which meant entering the water before the sun was up. Yep more early starts for us! At this time the fish are just starting
Lara shakes that Advanced Open Water stuff
Check out those Jazz Hands....and the amputated right leg! to feed wildly before the day kicks in and there was millions of fish in massive schools swimming around us. It really was incredible. Watching the sun rise from underwater is definitely another new expereince too.
I would say that it certainly ia a Great Barrier Reef.
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