So where did I finish off last time? Ah yeah, I was falling to a gruesome death from 14,000 ft. but miraculously survived right? It’s true, I had a great time at Mission Beach, and my second day/night there seemed to give it a bit more of an edge; I finally met some people who were going up to Cairns! It had seemed up until then everyone was going down from Cairns as they could now get through the floods, and those who leapt over the sodden ground were few and far between; not now though. Dervla, an Irish lass I’d met in Brisbane was there and needed a gentle nudge into doing a skydive, and Rosie, a really nice, bubbly English chick from just outside of London, kept me company alongside a couple of Dutch guys and a few from Sweden. No danger of a lack of company this time. I sat next to Rosie on the bus up to Cairns and she was making me laugh quite a lot.
Once in Cairns I went out for a couple of drinks in Gilligan’s, but didn’t last too long. With a 5:45am pickup time for the liveaboard and diving, sleep was a huge priority! I didn’t get anywhere enough of that though, and so quite surly, I got taken to the dive centre and geared up. I was pretty antisocial at this point given the truthful fact that I am just not a morning person at all or a punctual person for that matter!
A bumpy ride later and after a few introductions we were at the outer reef. I buddied up with Jan, a German guy who would later divorce me for his girlfriend (after she qualified from the Open Water Course) and down we went. Over the course of 3 dives I had seen plenty of fish, but had a bit of disappointing comparison to the Yongala wreck dive; the reef was good without being great. Maybe they should rename it to “The Good Barrier Reef” or “The Big And Decent Barrier Reef” instead of misleadingly using the word “Great”. That said, I did see a lot of sharks, turtles, nemo’s and other anemone fish (one had been blinged up with a massive speed stripe down his back. I think he was the bully), but I do prefer Asia and Ningaloo reefs for vibrancy, life, variation, and colour.
The night dive provided a new experience, and by this stage I was on course to becoming an Advanced Diver.
The next day gave me a deep dive and a couple of other tests, and my qualification was complete. I was now free to explore the reef in different environments. I was been played with like a pass the parcel game with dive buddies (I seemed to be only temporarily wanted, much like the kid who gets picked last for the footy side) and went through a disappointing four different buddies in three days. The best one was possibly Chevie though. She was content to follow my lead and have me point out and find the fish which was cool. Pleasingly I did not disappoint and found a massive Nepoleon Wrasse sleeping in a cave during out night dive. We also got circle by heaps of sharks before coming back onboard ridiculously over-excited.
Day three was the last dives and I got bullied by a turtle for a little while barging me out of his space; ran away from a trigger fish, keen not to repeat the Gili Island’s episode with Naj about a year ago; and teased a nemo or two for good measure. It was all good fun, but watching the boat fall to bits as we travelled back through a cyclone wasn’t as great. The ceiling fell down and cracked the skulls of the three body buildings onboard which made me cruelly laugh. Beef Beef Beef – serves them right for only talking about diet, protein, and gymnasiums. They have well and truly killed any Arnie jokes for me as well, but apart from that they were really nice guys (I’m being serious for once).
Back in Cairns I partied for a couple of nights with the other divers and crew and bumped into the various people from Mission Beach every now and again. It wpould have been nice to have spent more time there and see everyone a bit more, but as with all travels, you simply run out of time. I hope to keep in touch, and I’m sure I will with a lot of the people I met over my final week in Australia. Hey, I’ve even tried convincing some of them to join me in South America later in the year, but of course, all are very welcome.
Now I’m in Singapore and have only a short amount of time left, so it’s a bit of catching up with friends I’ve known for a while, and no doubt a heavy amount of drinking. I’ll blog this chapter later, but let it be known I was very sad to leave Australia, but I’m sure I’ll be back one day on my never ending travels.
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