Wednesday 17 December 2008

Sea dragons and seventeen degrees




At last!! Months after arriving here, and nearly 5 months since we last went diving, K and I finally got to go sub aqua at the weekend. We’ve joined our local diving club and on Saturday morning, we were up for a nice 9am start getting kitted up and briefed, then driven to the dive site (Bear Island) where we did a gentle, relaxing dive down to about 13 metres, for about 50 mins. The water temperature here is significantly colder than you might imagine – it was only around 17 degrees, which is pretty cold. I’m used to diving in 28 degrees plus, in tropical waters, so it was a bit of an experience. Obviously you wear a thicker wetsuit etc, but even so, I was cold!!

The underwater life was quite different too. No tropical fish and no coral reef, but a massive wrasse (with teeth I’m sure!) and a couple of beautiful sea dragons – like sea horses but bigger and very delicate looking (pic above - not mine!)

The club arranges all kinds of diving so hopefully this will become a regular thing – it’s such a good way to unwind and such a good reminder of why we came to Australia in the first place – beautiful!

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