Aussie Diver's blog

This is one of those subjects that will probably get a fair bit of feedback and if not I will be very surprised.
All the time I have been diving there has always been a situation of the ‘Them and Us’ syndrome, basically I am talking about who you learnt to dive with. I personally do not care as long as the people who are teaching are well qualified and have the experience to do the job, and that at the end of the day when you finally have the instructor come up to you and say ‘well done and congratulations’, you have deserved the qualification.

While working one day a guy came up to me and asked if I would be interested in any diving kit, to be honest I was not at the time very interested but after 5 minutes I was a little more that interested.
It turns out this guy thought he would love to dive but had never tried before. Now the interesting bit is that the people who he was talking to basically talked him into buying everything and I mean everything even down to BCD wash and anti fog for his mask in a tube.

Ask any group of divers and they will all say that the regs they are using is great. I am the same having used a Poseidon Jetstream for the last 7 years with no bother. But when I dived with the Beuchat VTR80 I could not believe how bad they were. Maybe I am missing something with the description as it says they are made for cold water, but does that exclude temperatures above 18º, maybe they are not made to work in temperate climates.

If the reg has one saving grace its small compact and light, but after that it’s all downhill.

If you are lucky enough, you will spend at least a week of your precious summer holidays diving or even better get the other half involved and make it a two week trip. If you have any sense at all you will have taken a bit of time out on the computer and planned where and who you want to dive with, this makes a lot of sense and takes the slog out of going from dive centre to centre trying to get the best deals.

There is not a diver out there who when arriving at there chosen dive centre has not thought ‘Lucky sods’ I would love to do there job and have here lifestyle.

I am a huge fan of AP Valves and the famous Buddy range of diving equipment and in particular there range of BCD’s and Wings. Within our small diving club I can count 4Commando Jackets and 5 Tek Wings, you may ask why and the reason is very simple Buddy have a reputation of being tough, well made jackets that are not going to fall apart after a couple of years hard diving.

It’s good to be back, people are always asking what’s the reason for coming back. Well it’s very simple, I love living in Lanzarote and I did not like living in Australia, it’s as easy as that, although I would give a great deal of money to see my Granddaughters every day, but thank whatever god for Skype.

Since arriving back in Lanzarote things seem much as before just a few of us getting a little older and things not working as well as they did but that’s a story for another day.

An amazing story just popped up in the local Sunday Newspaper relating to a monster shark lurking off the main coast area around Brisbane. Yesterday a 3.5mtr White Pointer (Great White) was almost bitten in half by an unseen predator, the general opinion is that it was another White Pointer but with the bite marks that it left on the smaller version the monster must be in the region of 5/6mtrs. Just to put things in perspective the picture shown with this article is about the size of the one almost bitten in half. The body was found just off Stradbroke Island caught in shark nets there to protect swimmer on the local beach.

One great thing has come to light with the publishing of this story the amount of public opinion that is in favour to leave the sharks alone, I was very surprised at the feeling of the majority of people mainly saying that ‘they are king of the food chain in the sea, leave the poor buggers alone’

Warrior’s rusting place beneath the waves.

Finally at 2.0pm on Sunday 9th October the 31year old frigate HMAS Canberra finally slipped beneath the waves off shore from Port Phillip Heads, Victoria.

With a muffled boom some 16 underwater charges inside the hull detonated and within two minutes she dipped her bows and slipped very gracefully below the surface. It was not the easiest sinking as the weather had delayed the scuttling from Saturday to Sunday and just before the given time she lost an anchor giving the organisers an extra headache as they tried desperately to hold her in position. But as soon as the explosives blew the bottom out of her she went down extremely fast.

A group of clearance divers have since been down to inspect the wreck and they report that all is well totally upright and will now be left to settle for at least a month before diving will be allowed to commence on the wreck.

In the scheme of things diving on a Saturday is normally a stress free day out with the boys, but this last Saturday was an exception to the rule. I met up with a couple of guys from the local dive club and with what I do not mind admitting a tremendous amount of trepidation we set of for Scarborough, Brisbane and to get aboard the Ocean Cat and within 30 minutes of casting off for our 90minute trip to Hendersons Reef or as its called by the local Hendo’s.

On board the Ocean Cat was us and 7 other divers all busy getting their kit together and chatting about the up and coming couple of dives.

After a very smooth trip out to the eastern side of Moreton Island watching a number of Hump Backed Whales glide past we soon anchored in an almost flat calm sea above the reef.

My excuse is its winter, and its cold, wet and very miserable at the moment. So anybody who tells you Australia is the land of sunshine and heat is talking out of their wetsuit.
Since the onset of the inclement weather diving has taken a back seat but last weekend I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

I got to see one of the wonders of the world, Migaloo.

Migaloo is an Aboriginal name and the translation means White Fella and he is a White Humpback Whale and the only one known to exist on the planet.