Getting Underwater

Our dive trip to Nelson Bay was fantastic. It was great to get underwater again and the dive conditions at Broughton Island were almost as good as it gets - clear sky, not too hot, calm seas, little swell or surge underwater, reasonable viz esp. on the first day, and heaps to see. One of the great things about diving Nelson Bay is the boat journey out to the dive sites which takes about 50 minutes. We saw a pod of about twenty dolphins on the Saturday and they swam alongside the boat for a good while, much to our enjoyment. We dived The Looking Glass as our first dive on both days - it's a cutting that halves a huge rock bommie and you can swim through it and check out the fishlife who enjoy the surge and food. We saw countless Grey Nurse sharks cruising in and out of the cutting and we relaxed to the view of a massive school of yellowtail silhouetted by the sunlight above us. Gorgeous. I also had to chuckle when Luke, our first day divemaster, was signalling "shark" to me and I was looking around wondering where it was when it finally dawned on me that it was a wobbegong resting on the rock about half a metre away from me - another diver almost touched it with his hand.

Tom mentioned in his blog that he had a few probs on his first dive on Sunday at The Looking Glass. It was a really difficult dive to be doing first after five years of no diving. He coped really well and I was so pleased that he agreed to descend again and go along the wall with me and Cam, our dive master. Cam told us later on that a Grey Nurse shark came within about 30 cms of us when Tom and I had surfaced near the cutting with our legs and fins probably looking very much like seals. It was just curious but I'm glad it didn't decide to see if we tasted good! Our second dive at Cod Rock was just the thing to help Tom feel more comfortable underwater. We saw a couple of giant cuttlefish - need to be seen to be believed! And there were scores of wobbegong sharks, one of which scared the daylights out of Tom as it cruised past from behind him! By the end of the second day I felt elated and really comfortable underwater. I can't wait to do some diving at the Cook Islands at Easter. I'm hoping this will be the start of making diving a big part of our lives again as it was 15 years ago when I first got started. It's the most wonderful experience - like travelling to a foreign country every time you go under the ocean.