Summer Vacation Part IV: Julian Rocks

Tuesday night it rained really hard.  We got back to the tent and barely had time to eat before the skies opened up.  Unbelievably it was the best night's sleep we had all week.  I'm not sure if it was just the white noise but we shut our eyes at eight and didn't open them again until five.  It was awesome.

We had spent three nights sleeping on the football field.  The shower and toilet facilities were not exactly what you would call "nice" or "clean".  And on Tuesday night the hot water pipe broke in the women's showers so Leah couldn't use them.  We decided to pack up and move camp for Wednesday.

We woke up and bailed out.  When we packed the tent we discovered that a colony of small ants had used our tent as a nest to get away from the rain.  When we took the rain fly off we discovered they had moved into the sleeve where the tent pole connects to the tent.  There were about eight million of them.  (maybe I exaggerate a little but there were a lot)  They were just little buggers but they were really pissed that I was disturbing the nest.  I got about fifty painful little bites around my ankles.  And then all of a sudden my foot felt as if I had stepped on a live electrical wire.  I had been bitten by a different kind of ant, this one called a "green ant".  Let me tell you it hurt like hell and continued to hurt for the rest of the day and itch for the rest of the week.  Not pleasant.  Leah got bit my one on her knee and it became a big red blotch the size of a silver dollar and is still itching today.  But enough about ants for now, I was going to write about scuba!

We grabbed a cuppa and got to the dive center by six.  Mick was there already and we got our gear ready to load on the boat and head out.  This morning we had a new member of our team, a guy who had done his pool work in the UK and was needing his open water dives to get his certification.  Mick introduced us to the boat's Skipper a really funny bloke named Waz.  (These are all nicknames by the way, Mick's real name is Michael and I'm not sure what Waz's given name is)  Our boat was called Reef Runner and wasn't as big as I was expecting.  This is the only picture of the boat I took.  Pretty lame of me.

We loaded up the boat with all of our gear plus two air tanks for each of us.  It took about an hour for us to set up our gear and load up.  The boat launch was less than five minutes drive from the dive center.  We were heading out to sea two and a half kilometers to Julian Rocks Marine park.  If you look at the picture to the left you can just see the rocks in the distance.  the whole area is a protected marine park.

The boat launched off of the beach and we had to help wrangle it off of the trailer and into the surf.  The whole operation runs pretty smoothly and you can tell they do it a lot.  The lifeguards have to use a bull horn to make sure the surfers give way to the boat as it launches.

The ride out to the rocks was bumpy to say the least.  The swell was about 1.5 meters and the boat crashed down hard each time we went up and over a wave.  All of us students were feeling nervous already and the motion of the boat wasn't helping.  It took us about ten minutes to make it out to the rocks and find our mooring line.  Then it was time to gear up.

Gearing up on a boat in rough seas is much harder than gearing up on a pool deck.  The boat was really moving around a lot and as I struggled to get my fins on I think I spent too much time looking down and started to feel like I was going to lose my breakfast.  Only I hadn't eaten any.  I looked up and around and instantly knew I wasn't the only one.  The guy whose wife had dropped out the first day was absolutely green.

I spent a couple of minutes looking at the horizon and trying to take deep breaths and got myself under control.  Honestly I think being nervous really contributed to the feeling.  Once we were geared up we were given the clear to enter.  Just like on tv we held our masks and regulators and feel backwards off the boat and into the sea.  It was fantastic and scary.

The rough seas made the visibility pretty poor.  Looking down you could see about 5-7 meters.  Considering the average out there is 15-20 we had crappy conditions.  The class all lined up behind Mick on our mooring line and waited for the ok to go down.  Just as Mick gave us the signal, the guy from the UK who just joined our group kinda freaked out.  He started flailing around and knocked the mask off of Leah's face.  That scared the crap out of her and she started to freak out a little.  She got the mask back on and calmed down.  Then we let the air out of our buoyancy vests and went below for the first time.

I'd like to say that we instantly took to scuba like we were born to do it, but truthfully the whole first dive is a bit of a blur.  We followed a rope down to the bottom behind Mick.  He gave us a few minutes to get our heart rates under control.  While we were down there the guy from the UK was sort of coming unglued and those of us who had been together for a few days all were really put off by it.  We were all confident in and trusted Mick and this guy was ruining the group dynamic.  At one point he knocked the regulator out of the husband's mouth.

Our first dive lasted twenty two minutes and we got to a depth of 12 meters.  Mick had hoped to keep us down for thirty minutes but UK guy went through his air so fast that he was nearly empty while the rest of us were about half full.

When we got to the surface we took our tanks and weights off and handed them up to the boat.  We then floated for a few minutes while the crew changed out our tanks.  It felt great to get the gear off and float for a while.  The wet suit makes you really buoyant and it took no effort to float.  I did get a mouthful of sea water sucked into my snorkel and thought I was going to puke.  Nerves and near seasickness was getting the best of me.  I started to think about going back to shore.

When our tanks were changed out we climbed back in the boat.  Two things happened then.  Husband started to puke and Mick told UK guy that he wasn't going to dive with us anymore.  Both of them were put on another boat and sent back to shore.  That makes three if you're keeping score.

The skipper and the staff were joking around and passing cookies (bikkies) around the boat.  At first I couldn't imagine eating a cookie.  I was feeling pretty bad, but I had a drink of water and when the cookies went past me I grabbed one.  And as soon as it touched my lips I felt better.  And that was that, I never even felt close to sea sick the rest of the time.  It was weird.

Our second dive happened about 45 minutes later and this time went much more smoothly.  No freak outs and we actually made about 30 minutes of bottom time.  We started to relax more and were able to actually see fish.  We saw a bunch of stingrays and a few small sharks called Wobbegongs.  It was cool.

By 11:00 we were back in the dive center with 2 dives logged in our log books.  Half way to our certification.

Tomorrow: Julian Rocks Day 2


I meant to write the rest of the scuba story tonight but I had my first day at work today and I'm totally beat.  I had a bunch of paperwork to fill out when I got home and it took longer than I expected.  One quick, stupid story:  I had to apply for a tax file number so I can get paid here.  I didn't know about this until today so when I got home I got online and found the application.  I filled it out and clicked send and when the confirmation screen came up only then did I notice that I had misspelled my own last name!  Of course by this time the office was closed so I'll have to call back tomorrow during work.  I R SMRT!