Blogs from Cairns, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

I've been in Cairns for a month now, with two weeks onboard the "Mike Ball Dive Expeditions" boat, a few days off in Cairns, a week with friends in Port Douglas and the latest thing I did: a trial in a dive company called "Deep Sea Divers Den", based in Cairns. I contacted the training manager through the dive company in which I did the dive instructor course back in Sydney. During my stay in Cairns, I stayed in a share house and as the ad in internet said "it wasn't fancy, but it was cheap". The good thing is, I had a room of my own with a lock, so didn't need to worry about leaving my things and also, the house was about 200 meters from the dive shop and close to a shopping ... read more

It was a rushed start to the day as Will's alarm didn't work, so we woke up at 7.20 and had to be on board the boat by 7.40! After a very quick brushing of the teeth and grabbing our swimmers we made a dash for the boat. Luckily we made it although we were one of the last to board. Once on board we helped ourselves to tea and Milo (hot chocolate) and cookies to help us wake up a bit. The Skipper then introduced the rest of the crew who would be helping us throughout the day and we went through the usual safety talks. It was then time to get our wet suits, snorkels and booties for our fins fitted before heading up to the top deck to enjoy the ride out to ... read more

I arrived from my trip on board the "Spoilsport" (Mike Ball Dive Expeditions) on Thursday (May 3rd). I stayed in Cairns for 5 days and all days were pretty much the same. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I went to walk around town for a bit, wrote e-mails and sent resumes to dive companies, spent a lot of time in internet and slept a lot as well. (So far my stay in Australia has been a lot of fun, but very intensive and these five days of barely doing anything was a welcome change). Cairns is a town that mostly lives on tourism with a wide variety of action sports (skydiving, rafting, diving, etc.) and with the Great Barrier Reef being the biggest attraction, but as a town, it doesn't offer much more than that. As I ... read more

Thursday 26th of April, after arriving in port, we took photos of the crew and the guests, took their luggage to shore and then went on to clean the boat. My tasks were cleaning curtain showers, emptying and cleaning rubbish bins, etc. I was done with the whole thing at around 12:30pm. After that, I took a shower and went to get lunch in the town. I arrived at a small restaurant where I sat down and ordered a steak hamburger with chips. Here, like a lot of other places in Australia, you can bring your own alcohol, so I crossed the street to a liquor store and bought a cold 750mm beer to have with my lunch. While having lunch, I updated the blog. After that, I went to a park to sit for about ... read more

To preface this day, let us first take a step back to planning of the trip. From the start, we have greatly anticipated and also slightly feared snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. Both of us have snorkeled before and really enjoy it, and the Great Barrier Reef is one of those things you have always heard of and wanted to see. However, what our elementary school books never said (or at least ours didnt) was that from November to May is what is known as Stinger Season. The warm water off the coast brings in the Irukandji Jellyfish, a 1 cm box jellyfish with a sting that has been described by people as the worst pain they ever felt (almost always requiring several days/weeks of hospitalization) and has even killed several people. The prior day, ... read more