Into the Blue

My trip to Cairns last week was an amazing adventure and one not to be forgotten.

My adventure started on June 2nd with the first time I'd been to the Brisbane airport since I arrived down under. This time though I was headed to the domestic terminal which is a short train ride beyond the international terminal. I flew to Cairns on Virgin Blue and took a taxi to a hostel called Tropic Days where I would stay for the night. I walked around the downtown area of Cairns and found The Esplanade which is the boardwalk area near the water. There is a beautiful pool that appears to just extend right into the ocean, many picnic areas and lots of space to enjoy the tropical north Queensland atmosphere. Cairns is definitely a tourist city, and if the Great Barrier Reef suddenly dies that city isn't going to last long.

Sunday morning I was up as the sun was rising to meet the van from ProDive Cairns that picked me up just after 6 am. The van driver was one of the instructors that would be on the boat with us. After a few more stops to pick up others, we all unloaded at ProDive’s downtown location. We sorted out bags, gear, and other last minute details before loading everything back up again and driving out onto the pier to board the boat. Breakfast was waiting for us when we boarded the boat and after a few minutes of getting to know people, room and "safety number" assignments were given out. I shared room 14, which was on the lower level(meaning no ocean view) with Josee, age 22, from Ontario, Canada. I took the bottom bunk in our room and had just about an inch of space to spare between my head and the wall when I laid down. I've decided that Australia isn't used to tall people, and I'm glad to be on the short end of the family.

We took in the views of the mountains that surround Cairns until there was no more land in sight. I managed to spot a dolphin swimming along the side of the boat for about a minute, and after about 3 hours of rocking back and forth, we made it to our first stop, Milln Reef. Once we tied up to the mooring balls the group split up. Of the 32 customers on the boat 11 of us were already certified divers, one was a snorkeler, and the other 20 were open water students. Of the students, about 6 were taking the class in German taught by Instructor Matti, while Dave and Eri took the rest. The diving officer on the boat was Oscar who oversaw the diving activities and did the dive site briefings. The skipper of our 78 foot boat SCUBAPRO III was Mark, and the two cooks were Marie and Freddie.

We did the usual sign your life away paperwork, got changed, and jumped in for our first dive around 11am. The area of Milln Reef that we were on was called Petaj and when I asked there wasn’t a consensus of what that means or where it came from. We surfaced and from there on out it was either dive, eat, or sleep!

Lunch was next and then dive two around 2:30 at the same site, but going out in a different direction. The boat them moved to the section of Milln called The Whale, which because of the coral formation the waves crashing give the illusion of a whale’s blow hole. We dove here at 4:30, had dinner and then after watching the sunset did a night dive around 7:30. We wrapped up the night by looking at some of the pictures that I had taken, watching parts of a Blue Planet documentary and having a snack before bed.

Monday morning we were woken up at 6:45 to make sure we were mostly functional by 7:30 for the first dive of the day. Breakfast was ready by the time we dried off and we motored over to a section of Flynn Reef called Tennis Court. I’ll note that I didn’t see any signs of fluorescent yellow balls or rackets, but was told it got the name because of a large sandy patch off the stern(back) of the boat. Go figure. We did one dive here at 10am, had lunch, and then moved along the reef to Gordon’s for dives 7 and 8 at 3 and 7:30 pm respectively. We had a bit of a scare when the skipper mistook the moon rising between some clouds for a boat on fire, but as we watched worried that something was wrong, it continued to rise and sure enough was just the moon. Tuesday morning we had a wake up time of 5:45 and slipped into the water, literally, as the sun was rising at 6:20 in hopes of seeing some sharks. Being the second buddy team in the water paid off because we found an approx 6 foot long white tipped shark trying to catch a few winks when we found him. We had breakfast again and were back in the water again at a new site, Coral Gardens by 8:30, had morning tea, and did our last dive at 10:30. Once we were out of the water it was a lot of people running around disassembling gear and cleaning until lunch and the boat ride back to Cairns.

I managed to do all 11 dives on the trip and took my camera on ever dive. Over all I took more than 400 pictures which I transferred to my laptop between dives. It was great to share them with people on the boat and in case I do start to forget, I have it well documented.

The group was made up of mostly people traveling around Australia alone and aged 18-35. Most were from the UK, but also Germany, Italy, Canada, and a couple from the US. My dive buddy for the trip was Nick who was traveling for a few weeks with his girlfriend, both from London. We usually made a small group with the couple from the US, John and Michele, for the dives. John and Michele got married late last year, sold their house and cars and are traveling around the world. I shared several of my pictures with them, which are posted on their travel journal at http://www.myworldjournal.com/generic/default.asp?username=john-michele. They told me several stories of their adventures including a visit to Antarctica. They have inspired me to keep traveling and we hope to visit each other’s homes to dive more once they return to the states.

After the trip we carried on the ProDive tradition to go out for drinks on the evening of our return and had a great time exchanging contact info and taking a few more pictures to remember the fun times. Wednesday morning I made my way to the airport and flew back to Brisbane. I spent almost the entire flight sleeping so I would be ready for my next adventure.

I selected some of the 400+ pictures I took. They can be found at the links below. The title of the album has the site, date, and dive number(s) in it followed by the link and the number of pictures in the album.

The GBR Part 1- June 3rd Cairns & Milln Reef- 'Petaj' Dives 1 & 2
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028644&l=84e1b&id=44801562
# of pictures: 59

The GBR Part 2- June 3rd & 4th "The Whale" Dives 3, 4 & 5
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028646&l=33b80&id=44801562
# of pictures: 48

The GBR Part 3- June 4th Flynn Reef "Tennis Court" Dive 6
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028647&l=c7551&id=44801562
# of pictures: 35

The GBR Part 4- June 4th & 5th "Gordons" Dives 7, 8 & 9
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028648&l=0f799&id=44801562
# of pictures: 56

The GBR Part 5- June 5th "Coral Gardens" Dive 10
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028700&l=a4a4e&id=44801562
# of pictures: 32

The GBR Part 6- June 5th "Coral Gardens" Dive 11
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028701&l=643f4&id=44801562
# of pictures: 52

Cairns and drinks with my new friends
http://uqedu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028702&l=8038b&id=44801562
# of pictures: 18

Also a good place to get a better perspective of where the dive sites are is at the following link… http://www.prodive-cairns.com.au/divesites.html

Cheers!