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First day into Cairns was my birthday which involved a 4 hour bus journey from Townsville to start the day off. This was fine though as we got to meet Ben, who was the dive instructor on the Whitsunday Atlantic Clipper boat.
He was on his way up the coast to find some farm work in Cairns, a 3 month prerequisite for somebody who wants to get a second year temporary working visa.
So now there were five of us - Jenna and Dixie, the Canadians; Jason, the Dutchman; Ben the dive instructor from the UK and myself. A nice group, which would stay together for the majority of the time we would spend in Cairns.
Jenna and Dixie stayed with some of their family, while Jason, Ben and I stayed at the Nomads hostel out of town on Lake Street. This hostel was pretty big and you got a free dinner and free transport into town which was pretty cool.
Ben and I were in the same 4 share dorm room and our room mate for the next few days was Michael a man who worked for the Australian flying doctor service as well as
a dive instructor. Most of the conversations were around diving or what he had been up to in the night - which usually involved him having to head out 4,000 miles to go and help deliver a baby which was pretty cool and far removed from the usual hostel chat that every traveller usually gets.
Our first night out was at a club/hostel called Gilligan's. This place was pretty massive and catered for the mass backpacker market. It had a huge amount of rooms as well as an outdoor area for live bands and a huge swimming pool as well as a 600 or so capacity nightclub. This place was well equipped. I was pretty glad I had decided to stay somewhere else though as this place was open till 5 am most days and there would have been no chance of sleeping much in that place.
We also met up with the German guys who were on the same boat as us in the Whitsundays, so there was a big group of us and it was nice to have a few people out for my birthday.
The weekend was spent pretty much chilling out by the
man made lagoon in the hot sun. I hadn't had much tan time on my travels so this seemed as good a time as any. Also I sorted out my advanced dive course on the great barrier reef. The dive course was amazing. Probably on a par with the Whitsundays, although the diving was a lot better.
I boarded the boat with Jason, the aforementioned Dutch guy, and we were put together in our bunk bed rooms on the boat - The Kangaroo Explorer.
This boat was well equipped to service all the people on board and to let every go diving 4 times a day.
The first dive in the morning was at 6 am so it was quite an early start but fine, I didn't really want to waste any time by not diving. The other dives were at 11am, 1pm, 4pm and the night dive at 7pm. You usually got a chance to dive 4 times a day.
The advanced dive course was great fun. On our first dive we were in absolutely perfect conditions (the best the crew had seen for 3 weeks) and the water was flat as a pancake and
the visibility under the water was 30 meters which was incredible. We took down the videographer Smon on one of the dives on this day and he took some great video of Jasn and myself diving. On that dive alone we saw a hawksbill turtle, various fish, a reef shark and a rare cow ray. Simon the videographer said that he had been diving on the Great Barrier Reef for 22 years and he had only seen a cow ray 3 times in total. It was an honor to witness this great creature effortlessly gliding through the water. It was about 2 meters across by about 2.5 meters in length, awesome !!!
The advanced dive course consists of 3 core dives, depth, navigation and night plus 2 electives - we chose underwater photography and search and recovery of an object.
The first night dive was on the same day as the lake like millpond setting we had earlier and at first I was quite nervous about getting not the water at night. Actually I found it to be one of the best dives. In that amazing visibility we had our torches off for most of it and the
best situation for me to compare it to is like walking around a park at night. After a while you actually forget that the scuba tank is on your back and even that you are under water.
The next morning we had our deep dive, this was to see if we got affected by nitrogen narcosis. Unfortunately due to me being a big fella and the air running out a bit quicker than I thought we only got down to 26 meters but were still able to do some maths skills to see if our brains had been affected. I think had we gone deeper the results would have been slightly different.
After the deep dive, our navigation dive was next. Our instructor and trip director on the boa, Murray, would take us out n this dive as he had done for the night and deep dives previously. At about 15 meters under the water Murray gave Jason and I the sign that he was out of air. At first I thought he was joking around or that it was part of a test to do with the course, but he wasn't !
He checked his equipment
quickly and then shared the alternate air source from Jason's equipment. It was a pretty odd experience, but it was good to see Jason and I had been trained well and we handled it properly. Murray returned to the surface and we had a dive to ourselves. When we got back t the boat, we found out what happened. Basically on the dive deck, the regulators that connect to the tank are removed as you get out of the water so that the dive deck crew know to fill them. Murray had either not taken his regulator off or it had been replaced without being filled. Either way he went down to 15 meters with 50 bar in his tank instead of 200. Oops !!!
Later that day we completed or navigational dive with the help of the 'trusty' compass and then the rest of the dives were left up to us to do what we wanted.
Seeing the coral and the marine life will be something I will never forget. It has been one of the many highlights of my New Zealand and Australia trip and I would recommend it to anyone.
After we got back
to Cairns I head back to the hostel to find out that Ben had won a buy one dive package get one free. So we booked it in for the weekend and headed out together. It was n these dives that I got properly face to face with two turtles. That was a great experience. It's possible to feed them sea grass and then the other divers can scratch their backs. It's ok to do so as they have this kind of algae stuff n their backs that they need to get off, so we're doing them a favor 😉
So this really is the end of my New Zealand and Australian adventure. I have had some amazing times, from swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura to heli hiking on Franz Josef glacier and then bungee jumping in Queenstown to doing so much diving in Australia.
It has been a great pleasure to meet up with old friends and also to make some new ones along the way.
One thing that will always stay with me is how nice, friendly and talkative people on this side of the world are. From the hippy who told me I would
never leave in Byron Bay to the runner who explained how glorious a day it was to be in Sydney. I'll never forget these people nor the memories of all the places I have been to and the things I have done.
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