Upon arrival in Sydney I lived briefly between at Sefton and Old Toongabie in Sydney's western suburbs. I moved to Neutral Bay where things between me and Rose went pear-shaped. I'd met Sal, been a bit of a pratt, Rose took off and cleared the flat out leaving me with my bed, CD player, some cutlery and crockery and my dive gear. So it could have been a lot worse, she could have put my dive gear on eBay. Living in Neutral Bay I was a ten minute walk from Dive 2000, my second home for the next 3years, And a ten minute walk in the other direction got me to the Harbour.
Each Saturday morning there would be free, divemaster led shore dives organised by Dive 2000. I became a regular on these and good friends with several of the divemasters and other divers. The routine would be get up, head up to the store to get a tank, decide where we'd be diving and then head off. After the dive we'd go back to the store to wash our gear off, hang out and chat and then maybe head to the pub or pie shop for a bite to eat. Sometimes, if we didn't fancy the arranged dive we'd head off someplace else. Sometimes we'd do a second dive, occasionally a third. Sometimes we'd head out to dive from a boat. It was a great time.
I remember the first dive I did with Dive 2000. I am fairly sure JCJ led it; he certainly was there, as was DJ. We went to Balmoral and dived around the pool enclosure, which for them would have been somewhat dull. I saw seahorses. Fucking seahorses! I was diving just down the road from my flat and there were seahorses. How cool is THAT? Over the weeks, months and years that followed I'd dive most Saturdays, plenty of Sundays and there was a year or so when some of us would dive on Thursday night, after work, then have pizza.
The gang comprised of DJ and JCJ who at the time did a fair amount of divemastering. Hempy worked Saturdays in the store. These three are exceptional divers and between them have thousands of dives clocked up. I have probably learned more from these guys than anyone else. Josie was doing most of the training for Dive 2000 and I helped her with a few courses after she turned me into a Divemaster. I was once a body for a Rescue Diver course and lay on the seabed under the pier at Clifton Gardens for what seemed like ages, watching life swim by and waiting for my rescuers to surface me and drag me back to the beach. Romy, DJ's flatmate was part of the gang, as were the two Justin's, only one of whom I am still in contact with. Rhys was there on plenty of weekends, as was Tara, until she discovered dragon boat racing and drifted away, metaphorically. DJ brought the Chad along and he never left. DJ brought along Jo, his then girlfriend and now wife and I took Sal along. Josie married Jason, who was, of course, a diver. Whereas Josie and Jason both still dive, Sal and Jo have...well, lapsed. Simone would come along, a tiny feng-shui loon who could spend a week underwater without breathing though a tank. It was a great time. There were trips to Jervis bay where enough of the gang went to fill a liveaboard boat - all mates diving together. We would dive from MV Indulgence, ably captained by Adrian, who kept us entertained for hours with his tales, and Annie who could conjour up a meal in the time it took us to have a dive. The story goes that they met in a pub where Adrain was eating a beer glass. They separated when Annie decided she was a a lesbian. Or something like that. The JB trips were always a scream, even if the weather was often bloody awful. There werre trips to Forster and Nelson Bay, Hempy and I dived the reef and the tugs at Eden. I dived in Melbourne and off of Cape Byron and the Gold Coast. I once dived off of Terrigal and was buddied with a guy who was partially sighted, as I discovered once we got back to the boat. But mostly we dived and dived and dived some more up and down the coast around Sydney.
In the course of my first four years in Sydney I clocked up a few hundred dives, completed my Rescue Diver, Medic First Aid, Nitrox Diver and ultimately Divemaster courses. I added to my collection of dive gear. I had a couple of BCs and a couple of reg sets, a wetsuit and a dry suit. I think I amassed 6 cylinders. DJ and Hempy were diving along DIR (Do It Right) lines and I moved in that direction. By the time I left Sydney for a spell back in London I was diving with a backplate and wing, jetfins and had my primary reg on a long hose and backup under my chin. I'd started to take a few pictures underwater, which was somewhat inevitable as Dive2000 was renowned for its underwater photography, owned as it it is by Kevin Deacon, himself an underwater photographer. JCJ and Hempy were mad keen and accomplished underwater photographers as was Josie. DJ and Rhys had housed video cameras. One of the Justin's had a housed SLR. You get the picture (and the pun.)
A few dives I remember. Sharks make for good reading, so to try and stop myself from rambling too much...
I saw my first proper-shark-looking-shark at night on a dive with DJ inside the Harbour, at Fairlight. It swam through his torch beam. I wondered why we weren't getting out of the water. It was a grey nurse shark, pretty much harmless. It did put the wind up me a bit though.
Later DJ and I, in dry suits and carrying cameras, sweat our arses off when we walked from the car park at the southern end of Maroubra beach to the rock platform where we jumped in to swim with a group of Grey Nurses. We called the dive "the sharks from the shore" because anyone sensible did it from a boat. But anyone sensible didn't get the dive site to themselves. The water was clear and we got some great pictures, which I have since lost. Bugger.
Another time we did the sharks from the shore, the wind got up as we dived and we ended up swimming quite a way back towards the beach as the exit looked a bit too sketchy for my liking. In the end we found a gap between wave sets and managed to scramble back ashore. That wasn't much fun.
I did dive the Magic Point (Maroubra) sharks from a boat a few times. My last dive before heading back to the UK was there. It was dusk and the boat had only two divers, Justin(D) and me. It was lovely, a very nice end to my first Sydney spell.
I went and dived Broughton Island from Hawk's Nest Dive, a store that has now closed. The owner, who took us out in his tinny, gave the dive brief telling everyone that the grey nurse sharks were in residence and we should swim over there, around this and that and then come back over a rise to creep up on them. Then, in hushed tones, he told me we were anchored almost right over them and suggested I simply drop off the back of the boat with my camera; he'd bought me some time alone with them while the others took the long way round. Of course I did not dive alone, that would be very poor form. I dived with my camera.
Despite diving Jervis Bay many times I never once say a shark-shark there. Plenty of wobbegong, angel shark and port jackson's, but none of the sleek blue-grey fellas that must have been there.
I did see sharks - Great White sharks - off of the Neptune Islands in South Australia. Not the first time I went though; a whole week passed without us seeing one. But a couple of days after I got back to Sydney I got a call from the dive operator saying "the sharks are back, come down now and I'll take you out for cost." I went straight back and we saw them, the first one before any of us had suited up. Incredible, majestic animals. Even in crystal clear water they seem to appear out of nowhere, and it is their girth more than length that blows you away. Strangely enough you feel no fear when in the cage. Even when a large white came between the boat and cage and thrashed the water into a mass of bubbles, bending some of the cage as he went, there was no fear. The year I went to see the white sharks Sal went to Borneo to see the Orang Utans. It was a big year for us and endangered species.
I could go on...and on and on. But there is a link to my divelog somewhere on this page, so if you're really interested you can go dig.
And besides, time to go home from work now.
No comments:
Post a Comment