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Mooloolaba: Diving ex-HMAS Brisbane Shipwreck and Sharks!
Posted by daveb on May 13th, 2009
You’ll recall that a few days ago, we were way up in Airlie Beach and heading further north towards the scuba dive site of the SS Yongala shipwreck. Unfortunately, the forecast bad weather forced us to cancel our dive and so we turned on our heels and headed back towards Brisbane. Disappointed that our last dive had been taken away from us, we bagan to research whether there were any other good underwater worlds for us to explore on our way down. There was: The ex-HMAS Brisbane warship had been deliberately scuttled off the coast of Mooloolaba (love the name!) and is now “one of the world’s top ten dive sites”.
We booked in for a three dive special: one on the wreck, one in the wreck and one in the aquarium over the road (shark tank, you see). So pleased we did, so gutted that we didn’t have an underwater camera to show you what we saw. The first dive took us around the exterior of this 100m+ warship and provided an opportunity for us to orientate ourselves with the boat, and our dive leader to familiarise himself with our abilities and, crucially, decide whether he’d let us “penetrate” the wreck on our next dive. We were in esteemed company. There were nine divers on our speedboat and everyone’s personal experience ranged from 600 to over 6000 dives. Everyone except us, of course: There’s Squiffy with her thirty dives and me with newly qualified fifteen… Clearly we were the ones under scrutiny due to our inexperience. Furthermore, dive leader aside, it appeared that we were the only ones diving with the normal compressed air, the others were using “Nitrox” (a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, allowing longer underwater stays). Oh, and we were the only plebs without our own custom-made, specialised diving equipment: we looked like a couple of happy-clapping tourists tagging along with Navy Seal frogmen on a secret mission.
Suffice to say that the first dive went astonishingly well for us and we were indeed invited to “penetrate his wreck”. The second dive was even better than the first and certainly moved the excitement rating up a gear. There’s nothing quite like manoeuvring yourself through a tight, dark hole only to be confronted with a thousand fish looking right back at you, no doubt thinking “oh shoot, if that fat bloke can get in here, so can a shark”. Spooky.
The visibility on both dives was amazing, over 20m, and we able to get a good view of the wreck. We were surprised by the amount of marine life down there and spotted Lionfish, Batfish, big Kingfishers, colourful wrasse and an octopus amongst other things. It turns out that having El Cheapo hire gear was definitely the way to go. The other feller in our group lost one of his weights and dropped his expensive torch! Three of the experienced divers in our party didn’t actually make the second dive, due to sea sickness. I feel quite proud that we managed to get into the water after being bounced around on top of it for long enough to make us both feel quite queasy.
I’m delighted to tell you that the third dive of the day was also the easiest. Back on stable ground we changed our gear and crossed the road towards the Underwater World aquarium and carefully tippy-toed into the huge shark tank. Suffice to say that we were probably the smallest creatures in this tank: Grey Nurse Sharks, Manta Rays, Sharkrays (looks like a shark and a ray – weird !) and so forth. Aquarium-visiting humans walked though the glass tunnel below us, pointed and waved. It was quite bizarre to see people underwater without Scuba gear! Even though diving in the shark tank was a “potted experience”, the size and quantity of the “wildlife” made it quite exhilarating. Catching a momentary glimpse of a “big fish” in the wild is usually a fleeting experience, whereas this tank was teeming with human-sized animals (one shark was over nine-foot in length).
Easily our best day diving, ever.
PS Whilst considered harmless, the Grey Nurse does have a mouthful of huge teeth which it opens and closes to breath- Squiffy
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