Great Barrier Reef Day 3 and back to Cairns

July 14 – Great Barrier Reef Day 3

We were up bright and early for our 6am dive. We actually went in the water a little later than that as we moved dive sites and headed back to Fish Bowl. Our dive wasn't as exciting as some of our others, we headed down the wall to start our dive profile off deep enough. We saw a sleeping turtle and some fish but otherwise it was pretty quiet. Back at the boat we got some breakfast which was similar to yesterday then had to pack our room up and check out before our 8am dive. It was a bit of a rush. We got back in the water and it seemed the fish had woken up. We saw a juvenile bat fish, a couple of reef sharks and a well hidden blue spotted ray. Back at the boat the sun had started to show its face, finally! We moved back to 360deg Coral Garden and had our last dive at 11am. We got the see Larry the barracuda that usually hangs out under the boat. We also saw a huge school of parrot fish, I didn't know parrot fish hung out in schools. We had some lunch up on the sundeck in the sunshine. We could still go for a snorkel at 1pm but I decided to enjoy the sunshine instead but Beau took advantage and hopped in with the water camera. Then we had to say goodbye to the Kangaroo Explorer and board Reefkist. We had a 2hr ride back to Cairns with a short stop at Fitzroy Island again. We had a quick stop for some whales too but they weren't as active or as close as last time. I read my book up on deck while Beau pseudo-napped. Once at the marina we were shuttled back to the dish shop and picked up Dotti. We headed to the caravan park we stayed at before and got settled in. We both enjoyed a hot shower before setting out to find some where to eat dinner. There ended up being a good little Thai place up the street and we had a yummy meal of padthai. Beau had an e-mail from Bombardier confirming a phone interview in 3 weeks time. We went to bed pretty early since we were both too pooped to poop.

Yellow one is a Foxface Rabbit Fish

Nemo!

Briggs Reef from above

July 15 – Cairns

We sort of took advantage of the fact we didn't have to be up early but really we didn't sleep in too late. We did some laundry before heading into town. We were all excited because we had two showings of the van today. Once in town we met an Italian couple and they had a look over the van. Beau took them for a test drive but for some reason the they didn't actually drive it themselves. We thought we had a second showing an hour later but it turned out to be the same couple. They had e-mailed us and texted and we replied to both but obviously they didn't keep track too well. Their English wasn't great either. We had some lunch at an Irish pub which included a pot (small glass) of beer. We wandered around downtown and got a 30 cent ice cream to enjoy on the board walk. We decided to head back to the caravan park and maybe hang out at the pool. Back at the park we got changed but then decided to try to fix the windshield instead. It didn't go as well as we had hoped and the sun hide itself away so it wasn't really good pool weather anymore. We did get a text from the Italians wanted to know about getting QLD rego and if we'd take $6000. We said we'd get back to them because we wanted to see how the safety we had scheduled for tomorrow would go. We took our camp chairs over to the pool area, the seats their were full of French people, and started doing some research on changing over the registration. It looked to be simple enough but we figured we should give them a call about the proof of address thing; in NSW just a receipt from a motel was good enough. We made some dinner and watched some tv. I set to work on updating my journal and trying to get some pictures fixed up. We got some stuff posted to our websites before bed.

Cairns Harbour

July 16 – Van stuff

We had to get Dotti in for her road worthiness check this morning at 8am. We dropped her off and walked into the Cairns CBD. It was pretty quiet since most things hadn't opened yet. We wandered around checked out some used bookstores, and souvenir shops. We killed some time in an electronics store too. We called the QLD rego people but found out we had to have a permanent QLD address to change our registration. I'm not sure what other backpackers do but I guess we wouldn't be able to do the registration here. We finally got a call about the van about 3 hrs after we dropped it off. We walked back to the garage and they had some bad news for us. She hadn't passed her road worthiness and had quite a few deficiencies. Crap... some of them were dumb though and I don't think we'll have a problem down in NSW but we'll definitely have to fix some of them. On our way back to the caravan park we popped into an auto parts store to start pricing out the parts we might need. Back at the caravan park we started googling some of the work that needed to be done hoping we (Beau) could do it ourselves. We called the Italian couple to tell them about not being able to do the QLD registration and they said they didn't want it then. Fine, we'll just sell Dotti to someone more deserving then. We started looking at some of the easier fixes in the van, we found the windshield wiper pump needed to be replaced and a fuse was blown for the heater fan. We rode our bikes down to the auto parts store and picked up these items as well as detoured to the grocery store. We now have functional wiper juice and heater. After dinner we started planning a route back to Sydney and figured out any stops we might want to make on the way back down.

Great Barrier Reef Day 2

July 13 – Great Barrier Reef Day 2

Beau and I made an executive decision to forgo the 6am dive. We are allowed 4 dives a day and with 5 opportunities this seemed like the best one to skip. Breakfast was quite the feast with pancakes, hashbrowns, sausages, beans and tomatoes. The boat moved dive locations and we were now on 360deg Coral Garden but still on Briggs Reef. We really had only moved about 500m. We had a dive brief before jumping in the water for our 8am dive. We descended right off the back of the boat but by the time we hit 19m we still couldn't see anything and were pretty disoriented. We didn't want to swim out into the great blue yonder so we surfaced then snorkeled till we could see the bottom then descended again. We had a nice dive and saw tons of fish but by the time we had surfaced we were a bit of a ways from the boat and most likely back at Fish Bowl. Once back on the boat we had a short break then went in again for our 11am dive. This time we snorkeled to the front of the boat and descended. We were joined by another diver whose buddy was having trouble with her ears so the 3 of us stuck together. This dive was awesome we petted a turtle saw a puffer fish and a mantaray! We got super lucky with the mantaray we had started swimming in the opposite direction when we heard a metallic tapping. We turned around and one of the guides was behind us trying to get our attention to point out the mantaray. It was super cool. After our exciting dive we had lunch and then a big break till our next dive. Beau went for a nap and I read up on deck. There ended up being 4 mantarays around the boat at one point and I ran down to get my camera waking Beau up in the processes. I got some surface pictures then turned to Beau and commented that we had seen turtles, whales, sharks and rays the only this we are missing is dolphins. Next this we knew someone was yelling there were dolphins off the back of the boat! Pretty awesome! A bunch of people, including Beau, hopped in the water since the mantarays were still around. Those of us on the boat were yelling at the people and directing them to the rays. Beau got some shots of a ray before it left him in the dust. Then we were back in the water for our 4pm dive. This dive had lots of fish again and was really nice too. We tried not to pig out on dinner again but it was hard since it was fish and chips. Not really a light meal before a night dive. We went on our dive unguided this time and it was super good. Right at the begining we saw a purple and yellow cuttle fish and we got pretty close before it jetted off into the night. There were red bass around again but we still couldn't get them to eat a fish. We also some white tipped reef sharks and a sleeping turtle with his head under some coral. We were heading back towards the boat when Beau starting flashing his light over one spot. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what he was trying to show me until I saw some glowing green eyes (sharks eyes are green in the dark). It was a wobbogong shark, they are super camouflaged and are pretty flat too. You could easily miss him if not for his glowing green eyes. Back on the boat we had a quick shower before falling into bed.

Yellowtail Fusilier

Moorish Idol

Titan Trigger fish

Bat Fish

Mantaray

Mantaray, from the boat

The Great Barrier Reef Day 1

July 12 – The Great Barrier Reef Day 1

We were up very early this morning and had Hungry Jacks for brekky. We parked in an area that was pointed out to us as free parking and walked the short block down to Cairns Dive Center. We got checked in, filled out safety paper work then were loaded in a mini bus and driven down to the dock. We boarded Reefkist, the day boat the would be taking us out to the liveaboard, Kangaroo Explorer. We boated out to the reef with a stop at Fitzroy Island. We also stopped for a bit of whale watching along the way and saw a couple of whales breaching. It was awesome they were actually jumping out of the water. We made it out the reef and transferred over to Kangaroo Explorer. We went through the welcome brief then got a tour of the boat before being assigned our cabins. Compared to the last boat we were on these cabins were luxurious. Actually compared to the van it was spacious too. We had some yummy lunch then got ready for our first dive. The first dive was with a guide so they could assess our skills. We went in at East Timor on Moores Reef with Tanya the Dive Master. She is very energetic. We got to hold sea cucumbers, Tanya loves sea cucumbers, and touch some giant clams. I went through my air fairly quickly though. I'm not sure if I just was cold, excited, nervous or what. Previously Beau would go through air faster than me but then again I'm not sure if we really had equal amounts in our tanks. They were also smaller tanks so the air doesn't last as long either. Anyways it was still a good dive. We then moved dive sites to the Fish Bowl at Briggs Reef. Beau and I had our first unguided dive and really enjoyed it. We saw several sea turtles, one only had three legs! A few more giant clams and tons of fish. We also decided to rent a dive camera and attempted to take lots of photos. After that dive we had a break and some dinner before our very first night dive! Since it was our first night dive we had to hire a guide. There were 6 of us in our group plus the guide and it felt crowded. I guess we have been spoilt in the past since we usually have 4 or less in a group. We did see a bunch of white tip reef sharks as well as a sleeping turtle and some red bass. The red bass use the torch lights to help them hunt but we didn't get to see them in action. After our night dive we had a shower then were pretty much too pooped to do anything else so we went to bed.

Cairns

A breaching humpback whale

The Kangaroo Explorer

Underwater Beau

Underwater Diane!

Turtle

Can you find Nemo?

Turtle!

Trumpet Fish

Three legged turtle :(

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