Maroochy and HMAS Brisbane

Friday 7th July

What can I say? This is the best dive of my life to date. The boat was decommissioned and someone suggested making it a recreational dive site and thank god they did. It’s been decommissioned in such a way as to make the dive very safe and easy, all penetrations have at least 2 other exits that you can see on entering the confined space etc and although the actual dive site isn’t very technical, the chance to dive inside a ship, through the engine room, quarters, weapon deck, control room etc – it was cool as. There were two dives, the first an orientation dive that we did outside of the vessel and the second was the penetration dive. For the first time, I wish I had an underwater camera – the fish were so plentiful. Lion fish, scorpion fish, puffer fish, barracuda, crabs and the amazing thing is that the wreck has only been down for 11 months. I will definitely re-dive this in a few years. On my way into the engine room, I got caught in a surge and banged my head on the rim of the penetration which was already covered in barnacles, so ended up with a little ‘kiss’ for my troubles. The Cleaner Wrasse were straight in there cleaning up and nibbling at the torn skin and trace of blood. After getting out of the water, the wound was clean and free of skin, so a wee bit of iodine and Bob’s your proverbial – amazing ecosystem under the sea!!

One of the lasses that dived had an underwater camera and although we swapped e-mail addresses, she’s not come up with the goods yet, so if that changes, I’ll update the blog.
So, all in all, a disgustingly active week – off to Moreton Island – second largest sand island in the World, after Fraser!!