Diving Australia and New Zealand

What a wonderful thing the internet is, I was able to plan most of the diving I did from 12,000 mile away and then just a quick call once I was in country to confirm the details. I completed 5 dives, 3 in Australia and 2 in New Zealand, to max depth of 24m with 3hrs 30mins of dive time.

My first dives were from our base in Brisbane and following my research and advice from those who had been, I headed for North Stradbroke Island . After a 30 minute ferry ride I took the local bus to North Stradbroke Scuba Centre, which is also a backpackers hostel and right on the beach. Bruce the dive guide (yes really) sorted out the 6 of us diving and we collected our gear from the hanging rails under the trees. The gear was used but still very serviceable the 6.5m ali RIB was loaded up and then launched through a low surf for the 15min trip to our first site Turtle Cave, Flat Rock. After a good brief on the area we rolled in to 24 degree water with vis of at least 15m. Flat rock is a very old reef and has suffered from some silting but still packed with life. I had taken my new digital camera, bought for the trip, and so started snapping away, though a lot of the pictures weren’t worth keeping!

Wobbegong shark, they seem to do a lot of this.

Although Turtle cave didn’t live up to its name we did get a visit from a logger head towards the end of the dive.

Dive was 34mins to 24m, my buddy got a bit low on air so we stopped early, and then had a good swim back against the current to the boat. This was my first tropical reef and I found it amazing and it was a real pleasure to dive in water at 24 degrees, I think they gave us wetsuits mainly for the boat ride there and back. We also encountered a wide variety of Puffer or Porcupine fish some of whom where very inquisitive.

Dive 2 followed much the same pattern after a shortish interval in the boat eating sweets drinking water and getting to know my fellow divers. 2 from the UK , 2 from the states and 1 Aussie, along with an extra guide who had just returned from a month in New Zealand . The centre carries out PADI training and the English couple were completing their Open water. The dive on Shag rock started with a flying visit from my first Manta and a pretty big Bull ray both of whom cruised over us in about 6m. The area around the rock was full of small gullies with a wobegong resting in every other one. So many you get a bit blase about them. The manta ray didn’t reappear until we surfaced at which point it looked very shark like for a while until he got close, but we did find a Blue spotted ray on the bottom.

Both sites were great and the centre looked after us really well and at £60 for 2 boat dives I felt it was pretty good value.

Our holiday then took us north to go sailing in the Whitsunday group of Islands which are within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, so I had high hopes for the diving, unfortunately whilst the weather was mostly warm and sunny it was very windy 25 to 30kts from the SE and we had significant rain overnight, remember when it rains in the tropics it really rains. The dinghy had a good 3 inches in it one morning. It was also springs which gives currents of up to 5kts between some of the islands. We took the opportunity to snorkel in a couple of places, the best of which was Butterfly Bay on Hook Island, a lovely enclosed bay with a fringing reef, at low water the reef was almost breaking the surface.

Amazing what you see underwater

Seen a lot on the reefs around Butterfly Bay, can anyone identify it?

Having finished our sailing holiday I arranged to dive with H2O watersports, the only operator on the island, I’m afraid I wasn’t very impressed, it was £60 for 1 boat dive and we were kept hanging around for a good 30mins while they got themselves sorted out. The boat was OK - a kind of Boston Whaler of about 21 feet, it cracked on and handled the rough stuff pretty well. With only 3 divers and the rest snorkelling we were in fairly quickly, no wetsuits, water at 27 degrees, though I had got my self a stinger suit to protect against the possibility of jelly fish. The first site they tried was untenable so we ended up diving Dumbell Island which is a super spot but didn’t offer much shelter. As soon as we rolled in we knew, lots of surge and about 4m of very milky vis.

Yes there were fish down there they just weren’t very easy to see!

Our guide set off at a cracking pace - I guess hoping to find a little protection from the swell, but he didn’t do much to show off the site to us newbie’s. In fact the best part of the dive was at the end in about 2m of water under the dive boat, where the snorkelers had loads of fish to play with. We stopped at the bush toilet on the way back and were issued refreshments (soft drink, biscuits and some fruit). Had it been a club dive we would probably have binned it, but I talked to the guide and he said they never cancel no matter how disappointing the dive may turn out to be.

On to New Zealand and I have to say I was really looking forward to this one. Firstly the Milford Sound is one of those places you see in all the best guide books and secondly the chance to see some of the deep species only accessible in the New Zealand Sounds.

What a contrast in operations as well Dave Johnson of Tawaki Dive arranged to meet the 3 of us diving on the evening before to sort out the paperwork, issue kit, resolve any issues and then run through a photo guide of what we might expect to see. We were then collected at 0600 the next morning for the 119km drive to Milford Sound. The road in and out is a problem as it reaches 3000 feet at the Homer Tunnel so they treat all dives as altitude dives and you have a very strict profile to follow. The other cheery piece of news is that because there is a 10,000 foot mountain range between you and the nearest chamber if you take a hit it’s an 8 hour Heli flight out!!! Makes you watch your depth!

Milford Sound at dawn.

Once out on the water with the sun lighting the tops of the mountains you really appreciate the splendour of the setting but it’s hard to appreciate the scale until the trip boats come out a little later.

Our first dive was a site called Purple Haze, following a very good brief from Dave we rolled into water at about 14 degrees Brrrrr. There are 2 reasons why Milford Sound provides such a unique environment, 1 because the fjord is so sheltered from the ocean that there is rarely any swell or surge and minimal tidal flow, this allows the more delicate species that normally occur below the surge levels to exist at 15m. The second reason is the rainfall, because the west coast of south island is the only land mass apart from South America that faces the southern ocean it gets a phenomenal amount of rain 20m per year is not uncommon. This causes a huge run off which creates a freshwater layer on the surface of the fjords, because of the rain you have rain forest which produces tannin which is leached out by the run off. So the surface layer is brown freshwater, sometimes over 10m deep. This reduces light levels allowing the deep water species to survive. Because there had been very little rain for the previous month the layer for us was only about 1m which was fantastic as it gave unusually good light.

The wall at Purple Haze

Purple Haze provide a great introduction with Dave pointing out all sorts of small items as we passed, the brief had included many new hand signals for the possible goodies we’d see. All the diving in Milford is wall diving where you can pick your depth but it drops off straight to 100m so buoyancy control is a must. It was spectacular and quite varied with lots of saucer corals and scorpion fish. Viz was about 5 to 6m

Atageua Nudibranch with urchin

Loads of different wrasse coming over for a look whilst we studied the smaller and less mobile sponges anemones and star fish. We did find some of the famous Black Coral (which is of course white) but the better specimens where promised for the afternoon dive. Following the dive we visited an old miner's hut on a beach near the entrance for a pee stop and Dave found us some raw Green Stone (native Jade) to look at but not remove. He also introduced us to his practise of bringing along a thermos of hot water, mixing to temperature with salt water and then pouring down the back of your wetsuit. Pure bliss.

The afternoon dive was on the north side of the sound at a site called two tone. This did have loads of Black coral most with its very own snake star entwined. The coral and snake star have a symbiotic relationship and Dave reckons that there is one snake star that has lived on the same coral for at least 11 years.

Yellow Snake Star on Black Coral

We also had a quick visit from a fur seal or 2 just to see if we might be fun to play with. The dive was again fantastic, but we had to leave the crayfish as the north shore is a marine reserve. We surfaced to provide entertainment for the trip boats and a further treatment of hot water down the neck before heading back to shore escorted by the resident pod of dolphins.

Lunch was taken at the Milford Lodge the only place to stay in Milford and where you are left if you go outside the profile. This gave plenty of time to do the paperwork and go through the identification books while off gasing ready for the ascent out of the sound. On the way back we stopped at several spots for photos and Dave to explain some of the natural history of the area. Arriving back at base at about 1800 after a fabulous day. All for about £100, excellent value.

Will I go again? Definitely!

© Nick Booth May 2005