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After a short 2000km flight south from Cairns to Brisbane we were greeted at the airport by another of Geoff’s old mates, Mac. In fact, this is the guy that ran Aquasports at Poole, the company we mentioned in the last blog that Jo, Mark and Geoff all used to work for. The story is quite simple, making money out of a British summer was pretty tricky (from what we’ve heard about the UK weather this year, I’m sure this will make sense) and the profits (if any) were extremely unpredictable. So about 15 years ago, Mac and his wife Dot headed down under with a container load of boats and dive gear, to try again in a warmer climate. They live an hour south of Brisbane at a place called Helensvale, near Surfers Paradise and we broke up the tediously busy journey there by taking a detour into our first ever drive-through pie shop, fantastic.. It’s lucky for my waistline we don’t have them back in the UK. The bumper to bumper traffic on the multilane freeways seemed a million miles away from the isolated roads of the west coast..
Geoff first visited Mac and Dot in 1997,
when they were relative newcomers to the area and Mac was busy expanding his diving empire. At this stage, Mac was already PADI Course Director for the area and running dive courses out of a local fishing shop, but keen for a bit more independence he was building a rather large teaching pool in his back garden. Mac is a hyperactive guy with endless ideas, ingenuity and energy who likes a challenge and doesn’t like paying someone to do stuff for him - a bit like Geoff really….. So a 15m long, 6m wide, 5m deep pool in solid rock…. no problem!! Geoff and his then girlfriend Jane, arrived just at the right (wrong?) time and with the pool just a muddy hole in the back garden, they set about helping Mac turn it into something more attractive.
It wasn’t all one sided and in return for a couple of months of hard-labour, Mac took them through to their PADI Divemaster qualification as well as feeding, watering and housing them (well Dot did that bit!) Geoff recalls having the best suntan of his life spending days surrounded by the white rock of the pool walls, in the middle of
the Ozzie summer. Anyway, just as he left for a bit of rest and relaxation in the Cook Islands, the pro’s were brought in to spray concrete over the tons of steel reinforcing bar that they had put in place to form the pool. Unfortunately the new concrete had to be left for a month or so to settle before the pool could be filled…..in other words he never got to swim in it… So, of all the things that Geoff was determined to do on this world trip, swim in a certain pool on the east coast of Oz was pretty near top of his list. Being autumn when we got there, the water wasn’t exactly warm, but the pool was lovely all the same and we swam, snorkelled and belly-flopped off the diving board, everyday that we were there.
Also staying with Mac and Dot at the time were their ex-neighbours Chris and Norman, a lovely couple in the process of emigrating to the area. It was great to have them around and meant that Mac had someone else to pick on apart from us….in his own sweet way of course!
Geoff had a trip
down memory lane when Mac took us out for a dive at the ‘Seaway’, where he had done so much diving 10 years ago.. He had told me that there was a lot of sand and not much else, but with the help of a few tyres things have changed a bit and we saw seahorses, moray eels, catfish, toby’s, rays and cuttlefish.
Every morning Mac fed the local birds, including Kookaburras and magpies, but the main attendees were hundreds of Rainbow Laurekeetes that made the most horrendous squawking row! Mac does some mechanical work (he also ran a garage back in the UK) and Geoff was happy to help out fixing old saws and removing warped cylinder blocks..(apparently). Anyway he was in his element getting his hands dirty for a few days before we flew to Sydney, our last stop down under.
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