8th December, 2002 // Australia
Airlie Beach and DIVING
Airlie Beach. What a town. Our adventures started by finding our campsite, going for a beer and swim, just touring the town. The next morning, the day or our dive, we were beach bums (well not actually the beach, but the lagoon where it is safe to swim!). Our three day liveaboard diving trip began @ 7pm. First night, half the people on the boat were sea sick. Some so much that they had to be picked up by another boat and brought back to land. Jeff and I handled the situation quite well, Laura is another story!
After our first night, things were looking up. We dived around the Whitsundays islands, Hook Island to be exact. Our first 2 dives were pretty uneventful. Not much to see, the visibility was only about5 meters. The four certified divers as we were called (us three and Evo from Holland) dived the rest of hte day together. Each dive got slightly better. The food was amazing, and all of us overdid ourselves on the food. There were 12 of us on the boat diving, so the second day, the fun began. WE went to the Great Barrier Reef! When we first arrived, Giant Tremelli swam around our boat and the friendly Wrasse named Charly (probably about 1.2 meters long!) came to visit. WE swam and snorkled with these HUGE fish, before doing our first dive.
I am happy to report that we did not see any sharks! Scary ones anyway, only one Shovelhead shark, that Jeffery practically crawled into bed with he was so close and yet did not even notice. We saw our first Sea turtle. WE think it was alive, but it did not move adn just posed for pictures. We saw lots of neat stuff. Giant Crayfish (like lobsters) clams, parrotfish, there is so many I cannot even list them. At night, we sat outside on the deck watching the sunset, telling stories and playing drinking games adn fishing. It was a great trip! We had a great croud. Jeff and Laura both did the night dives. I decided not to go on account of it being DARK!, but they did, and with the exception of Jeffs torch going out, leaving him in the dark, shark infested waters, all went well.
Our last day, we did two dives (more turles!) and headed back to land. Last night , our crew got together for night out. I cannot believe we all lasted as long as we did. It was an accomplishment to go to three bars, stay out to 2am. We played crazy games for free drinks. Our group ended up in quite the situations...wearing noghting but G-strings and Bras on stage (that was the men!) Jeff having his shirt ripped off by the competition. It was all fun.
After recouping today, we plan to drive up the coast a little further. This was the highlight of Australia thus far. We hope to do another live aboard up the coast and hopefully more diving.
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