KANGAROO EXPLORER Volunteer Wrap-Up

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KANGAROO EXPLORER Volunteer



Finale



I did it! I managed to get through the whole week and for the most part I had fun. I didn’t get to play scrabble with the others because we worked late, but I did enjoy myself. Thank goodness for cribbage on the computer. And I had my Kindle. Really, there wasn’t any spare time except way late at night and then I would just fall asleep.



The diving got better with Mel around. A dive master with two teenage boys, she is a lot of fun and really knows the dive sites. She is also a great dive model, doing lots of goofy things and because she is an underwater photographer she knows how to pose for the camera. I enjoyed diving with her and my other dive buddies, Florien, Guy, and our excellent boat cook, Libby. Libby was a great dive buddy, too. She dives slowly and is very observant; she found nudibranchs, a large manta ray, and a wobbegong shark. I also dove with several of the guests and would like to thank each of them for sharing their dives with me. The dive coordinators worked hard to make sure that the divers had a safe dive each time.



Due to rough seas we did a site called East Timor twelve times. This could have been boring, but Mel showed us an interesting crevice, not a swim through because it terminated in a dead end, but it offered beautiful photo opportunities. This is where I did the last dive of my trip, and it was just as interesting as the first.



Just for the drama, I guess, I dropped my underwater camera in the rinse tank half an hour before returning to Cairns. I was trying to take a photo of a camera bag that had been left on the boat. I thought it was one that a guest had lost and since I had his email address I was hoping he could identify it and I could mail it back to him. I leaned over to center the shot and the camera just sort of bobbled up and lurched out of my hands and into the water. I grabbed it out quickly and dried it and put it in a container filled with rice so I take it to the photo shop to see what could be done. I wanted to cry, but after a bit I realized I had been lucky it happened on the last day of diving, and not on the first dive day of the trip. At Digital Divers, Chris suggested closing the camera up in a plastic bag with some desiccants for two to three weeks. Then check on it. Perhaps it didn’t take enough water to hurt it. Otherwise I will turn it in to my dive insurance. Perhaps they will cover a replacement.



Then I forgot to carry my dive gear on board the transfer vessel, Reef Kist. I had my hands full and the crew hurried me aboard and I just plain forgot it. I thought one of the dive masters would lift my bag aboard for me, since I had asked them what to do with it and they told me where to put it, right under their feet. Anyway, I made arrangements with the shop to put it on the boat the following day.



Once back on dry land, I walked to the dive shop and collected my two hundred dollars (the deposit for the trip in case I decided the work as a volunteer was too hard). That was nice; some money for souvenirs and a couple of meals. I think I held my own on the boat, and earned my keep, but it was hard work. I got in a lot of diving; twenty three dives on the Explorer, seventeen as a volunteer, and 37 dives on the Great Barrier Reef (both boats) total. That resulted in a lot of photographs…I have my work cut out for me, sorting, editing and filing them.



Retrieving my dive gear the next day went off without a problem except for finding the slip where the boat docks. It was a comfort to pick it up my dive gear at the dock and have it in my possession again. It took a lot of energy to carry it back to the hostel. Some people would probably have hired a cab. Instead I carried it, literally, from pillar to post, as the saying goes…setting it on trash cans and handrails and anything that would support it for a minute or two, as I made my way from the marina to the Central YHA.

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Photos

Into the Crevice
Wonderful dive for two divers. More kicked up the bottom and made photography impossible.

The Author
Taken by Mel; really nice to have a photo of myself.

Guy in the Crevice
If you knelt down and just waited the big fish would swim around you just like these little fish.