Townsville

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Townsville July 13th to 17th

Dive Trip-Siesta
We headed south to the southern end of the barrier reef hoping to get a few dives in after
missing out due to strong winds further north in Cairns. “Townsville” not an inspiring
name, however a pleasant surprise was to be found. The port of Townsville is one of the
busiest in Oz exporting silver, lead, nickel, zinc, as well as beef, sugar and molasses.
We shopped around and got standby rates on a 4 x day 3 x night live aboard to the Barrier
Reef with 2 x dives on the well known wreck of the Yongala.
The boat named the Siesta was pretty basic but I guess you get what you pay for. We boarded the boat early evening and told to get in our bunks and attempt to stay there for our overnight journey to Wheelers Reef. That was when the sick buckets came out for the rest of the journey for some unfortunate guests, unbelievably Stephanie being one of them on the 3rd overnight crossing. The diving was good but not great despite the name of the area. However the two dives on the Yongala were amazing because it sits on sand in the middle of nowhere, half the residents of the surrounding ocean appear to live there. Our 7am dive was after the night feed for the all those living there, and so they were all chilled out and just relaxing. On the seabed we saw an assortment of sharks having a siesta, further up the wreck were loggerhead, green and hawksbill turtles just cruising, there were several sea snakes 2 of whom were were having an intimate moment, we felt a bit like peeping toms, but hey you still have to watch. The assortment of fish we saw would take too long to list even if we knew all the names, suffice to say there was a lot. The journey back to Townsville saw us arrive in time for most of the guests and crew to meet up for a meal and some liquid refreshment and of course lots of competition for whom saw the biggest shark.

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