Australia 2005

My Summer Break In Australia (July - Oct 2005)

Links to Photos

Kangeroo Explorer Diving Photos

Spirit Of Fredom Diving Photos - Coming Soon

Carins-Coming Soon

I spent 5 weeks in Cairns, 4 of which were doing my PADI Divemaster course at Cairns Dive Centre. I really enjoyed this as I got to go out to The Great Barrier Reef for 3 days every week. I would spend 2 days a week in the pool & classroom helping out with the Open water courses.

Then its off out to the Great Barrier Reef to assist with their open water training. The 06:00 dive is a fantastic way to start the day !! Mind you I have to admit that's not what I thought on my first week when doing the wake up calls at 05:30 !!! Breakfast's ready when you get back & then its time to get ready for the 08:00 dive. Then its dive time at 11:00 & then some boat duties at 13:00. After filling the cylinders & grabbing some lunch It's time to move dive sites & once were all moored up its Dive Time again :-) Then fill some cylinders & eat some dinner & prepare for the night dive. All the days on Kangaroo Explorer are fun, activity packed & long but it sure beats the normal routine.

The diving was all really nice, the water temp was around 23°C which was nice for my New O'Three 3mm Wetsuit. The viz varied from 5m - 35m so was always pretty good. I had a Fantastic 150'th dive which was a night dive, I saw 3 black tip reef sharks, I got really close to 2 of them!! I also saw a sleeping turtle & a huge Barracuda swam over my head which was really cool.

I have learnt a lot from this course both by learning the dive theory & the practical skills. I defiantly leant most from the practical experience gained working on a liveabord boat & by helping the open water students with their skills & general diving.

I made some great friends with the other staff on the boat as they were all really friendly. We all worked hard but most importantly I had some really good fun & I got to do some great diving on a number of different sites on the Inner Reef.

From Cairns I flew down to Sydney to meet my parents. In Sydney I did the bridge climb, went to the Sydney Cricket Ground, I went up the Sky Tower & went to the Aquarium. The bridge climb was really good, unfortunately you can't take a camera with you so I don't have any photos from the climb but I do have plenty of photos of the bridge from the harbour cruise. The view from the sky tower was really nice as you can see the whole city but the view from the bridge was better !!! No silly glass to stop you plunging to the ground !!!

Once we left Sydney we picked up a car & drove up to Nelson Bay in Port Stevens. Here we did some nice shore diving, sadly due to the tides it was only possible to do one dive per day but they were some nice shore dives & it gave me a chance to play with the new underwater camera.

From Port Stevens we headed up to Brisbane, as it was a long way we stopped off at Coffs Harbour for a night. The beach was lovely there but sadly we were on a tight schedule to get to Lamington Park during daylight. We stayed at O'Riley's Guest house in Lamington National Park funnily enough this was located in the middle of nowhere. After a 50 minute drive up a steep narrow road with single width roads around blind bends with sheer drops off the edge we finally arrived at the guest house. It was a early start for the 06:30 bird walk but hey I would normally be coming back from my first dive by then !!!

From Lamington Park we went to Dreamworld which is a theme park about 30 mins outside of Brisbane. This was a fairly small park but it had some fantastic ides. I can't really decide which my favourite is. The 120 metrefreefall ride was pretty awsome its the largest freefall ride in the world, it takes 90 seconds to get to the top & let me tell you its really REALLY high as for the drop, Its just case of holding on & trust your harness, your not able to control your legs so there is no point of worrying about them.

Another awesome ride has got to be "The Claw" Its like a Viking boat but you sit around the edge & it rotates as it swings. When the arm goes past 180 degrees you become weightless & your body forces up on the harness.

On the left there is a selection of links for the pictures I have taken during my time in Carins, if you want a full size quality photo so you can print it then just send me an email.

Some of the pictures are not up yet as I am still travelling & can't always get enough time to process them all or I can't get online to upload them all.