THE REEF

Ahoy Mateys,


I have just returned from a 3-day live-aboard on the Great Barrier Reef, and it was so beautiful. Prior to setting of I took a two-day pool course where I learned a lot of theory then got into the water to master the basics. This was a great experience in itself, I really enjoyed learning about the dangers involved and how to properly prepare for and avoid them. In the pool I practiced with two Swedes, 2 Spaniards, a German, and a Kiwi from New Zealand. Nick, our instructor did a great job making everyone know their stuff and feel comfortable in the underwater environment. And when it came time for the final exam everyone in the class passes, I myself got a perfect score! After that it was off to the boat…

The first of my 10 dives we all just had some fun swimming around 10 meters and getting acquainted with the Reef and the new depth. After that we had two more dives that day where we practices some important skills along with doing some fun explorations. The Reef was so beautiful! That day the sun was shining, and since we weren’t so deep the colors were all really bright. That night we stayed on an incredible 33-meter, 4 story diving boat. The accommodations were great and the food was an all-you-can eat buffet of delicious food. The next day we took our last training dive and earned our open water certification. Later that day we also did two adventure dives that count towards are Advanced Certification; Peak Performance Buoyancy and a Night Dive. During the night dive we saw heaps of Reef and White Tipped sharks, which we spotted by the reflection of their green eyes from our torches. The next morning we did our 30 meter Adventure Dive where we saw a giant lobster, Great Barracuda, and a couple of the venomous Lion Fish. Our Instructor also showed us the Cleaner Shrimp, and as he held perfectly still with his mouth held open the shrimp actually went into his mouth and went to work. That day we did two more dives then headed back to port in Cairns. All in all it was a great experience and a hobby that I want to continue to pursue. We have already booked some volunteer work on the day boats where we would get to dive and eat for free. Soon we are heading down to Townsville and may do a dive at the Yongala wreck.

Let you know how it goes,


John

Mission Beach

Hey all,

After my stay in Cairns John and I decided to go down to Mission Beach and stay with yet another extremely interesting host. For the balance of our stay Mike would “inform” us about the different UFO sightings he has had and the various conspiracy theories of the government. He would then go on to say how young people don’t know how to think because of the widespread use of the Internet and all that goes along with it. Needless to say, he was quite the character. Mike was born in Virginia and worked in a restaurant until he was 25 then moved to Vietnam, and eventually Australia. He lives on a 30-acre property in which he hopes he can one day turn into a cooking school for the physically handicapped… or a campground. While there most of our work consisted of clearing debris from around his property which were left over from cyclone Yasi. The Cyclone had done a good amount of damage to the area so we were pretty busy for most of the time; although we did have some time for fishing and a bond fire down by the creek. After a week at Mike’s house we were definitely ready to move on so we headed out to the town of mission to stay in a hostel and plan a skydiving trip for the following day. The skydiving was incredible! We planned a jump from 14,000 feet to land right on the beach. As we were flying up we had some great views of Mission and the surrounding area and the few amount of clouds gave us a great perspective of how high we actually were. As the plain got ready for the drop and the hatch opened my instructor had me leaning outside of the plain, and without any notice I realized at one point that I was not sitting on edge anymore. As I fell I reached speeds over 120 mph and which made the 60-second freefall feel like no time at all. Once the shoot was pulled the instructor let me take the controls to try my hand at flying which was really fun. We came back down to earth with a clean and smooth landing and all I wanted was to do it again. But alas, we were already scheduled to make our way back up to Cairns for a weeklong Scuba dive course out on the reef. This trip is so great.

Hope all is well back home I miss you guys,

John

Back to Cairns

Hello everyone,

Sorry for not updating the last couple of weeks, I have been pretty busy and without free Internet access.

 So I had finished up my stay with Mike and Sigang, and I have to say it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I so thoroughly enjoyed their daily pace of life that it left me aspiring to find a way to achieve such greatness for myself. Mike and Sigang live simple and without excess, they do what they need to, then do what they like with a good amount of traveling. In their secluded house in the Daintree Rainforest, they have little worry of neighbors and spend most of their time in the company of each other. The place is truly a tropical paradise. However, eventually our stay came to an end as we all left the “treehouse” early one morning. Everyone piled into Mike’s dinghy and we were dropped off at Brad’s house (our first host), we said our goodbyes to Mike and Sigang and I can only hope I run into them again in the future. Brad then gave us a ride back down to Cairns which was incredibly considerate, the bus fare would have been 60$ each. However, the feeling of Cairns was such a strong contrast to the tranquility of the Daintree, and within a couple of days I became increasingly more bored of the city lifestyle. However, there was the proposition of picking up work on some of the dive tour boats. Diving the reef is something I need to do and if I work in one of the programs available I can get my Dive Certification along with extra dives for a seriously discounted price, for just being a deckhand! So after a number of nights in a hostel we scheduled an accommodation with a new host Chris Taylor. We are currently staying on Chris’s boat, which is located in the Cairns Marina. Chris is semi-retired from his dive company and hopefully he can hook us up with some good connections to the other skippers in the marina, whom he has breakfast with once a week. Chris needed some help moving furniture from his old house to his new house and warehouse. We worked just about an eight-hour day, then got the next day off which worked great for us. He lives with his wife and two children in a beautiful house that overlooks the city and ocean. On Wednesday we plan to go slightly north to Smithfield to stay with a new host where we will be moving some rubbish and also painting prep most likely.

After that we will be going down to Mission Beach to stay with Mike in the caravan, I will let you know how it goes…

- John