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Published: November 16th 2010
well from Carins, i hopped aboard a boat taking us to our diving vessel called the Kangaroo Explorer. I met my first Australian since ive been here (everyone else has been a visitor) so i was excited to ask him all sorts of questions, one of the things i was excited to ask about was the general feeling of white Australians towards Aboriginal Australians since its seems like their is some animosity.
As luck would have it, he is actually a tour guide and knew loads about Australian history and about Aboriginal culture, anyway, i wont boar you with the enitre story only some facts (that hopefully i wont mixup😊 ) so apparently there are over 600 different tribes with about 250 different languages. And, the one thing i did know, they are the oldest goup of people in the world. 40,000 plus years. Aboriginies are semi-nomadic and know the land and move with the seasons (which is kind of amazing since Australia is the harshest continent on earth. What i think is most interesting is that some of them still live they way they used to. however....for many of them the Australian goverment gives them houing, money and
designated land, ect. much like the system we have in the U.S. And since it is part of their religion to not have belongings, they just destroy things that are given to them ( like houses for example) anyway, this is how it was explained to me by the Australian bloke i met.
so enough of my rambling, ...diving....so i decided to get my Advanced/aventure dive certification since i was already planning on doing 8 to 10 dives and it was only a little extra to do advanced courses while out there. in order to get this certification you must do a night Dive, a deep dive and a navigational dive. so, the night dive...
we waited for the sun to set, i had already done two dives ealier that day and on the first dive i was having trouble equalizing my ears. on the desent, my right ear popped and for the rest of the day i had a terribly earache and couldnt hear out of it. I asked a girl that worked on the boat for some asprin and she told me to go get a drink of water and that i would be okay. i
just starred at her thinking " yeeeahh. water always cures an earache... i think i will go get some and pour it in your ear, see if that helps. it might make me feel better." anyway i went away mad, and still in pain. so then we gear up for the night dive and start our desent into the blackness. one the way down my ear is KILLING me. it hurts SO bad, im just thinking the whole time "get me out of here" but i was trying not to be a baby about it. My dive buddy was not staying next to me so im terrified that i will lose him in the dark, then my flashlight is not working 100% and my ear is STILL killing me, so....i just start crying. i cried pretty much the entire dive, looking around at everything, crying. making sure my dive buddy was in sight, crying. looking up at the moon shining through the water, crying. Pretty soon my regulator is making really funny noises. you know the kind where after you cry you start taking in short, quick breaths. its funny now, and no one noticed because it was dark. anyway
we start our accent, get onto the boat and our dive instructor starts laying into us about not stayin togeher. at this point i dont even care, my legs are shaking so bad i can barely stand, Scotty (divemaster) looks at me and says " are you okay? you look like you have been crying....have you been crying?" i reply with a "maybe...." still crying. it was aweful. so embarissing and sooo painful. anyway, this was the worst part and everything got considerably better after that... and even though i was crying, it was kind of interesting being in the ocean at night. we say the little things that light up when you disturb the water and that was pretty cool.
The navigation dive was great, as was the deep dive. we went to 24 meters (dont know what that means in feet) but its pretty deep. at this depth you start to feel the effects of nitrogen narcosis, which is suposed to feel like being drunk. some people get really crazy and try to feed their air to fish and craziness like that. i didnt notice anything, but we werent there for long.
my last two dives were free dives, and they were INCREDIBLE. The Great Barrier Reef did not disappoint. It was the most incredible thing ive ever seen. it takes your breath away, you can just stay in one spot starring at all the corals of every color, and fish swimming all around you. Awesome. Met some fun people from Sweden and Germany, too which was cool.
back on land and its kind of nice. was wet for three days straight. (3-4 dives per day) now im in my room and still have my sea legs....the floor is rocking back and forth!
Ready to get off the tourist trail soon...
Cant wait to see a kangaroo!
oh and by the way..the pictures dont do justice.
Mom and Dad, sorry i havent called yet. Couldnt get my phone card to work. should be able to skype in a day or so! love you.
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christina
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Tara, I am loving reading your blog! Sounds like an incredible time and I am extremely jealous! Sorry about the earache and the bad water advice! Hopefully its better now! The pictures are amazing! Stay safe and keep writing! <3 teenymarie! ;)