Aussie Diving - June week 2 (Fri 6th to Thur 12th June)

[Sas]

Hi,

well I hope almitywife doesn't mind me starting the Aussie diving thread this week!

Today I did three dives near Portsea with a new buddy as my regular buddy is up diving in Ewens Ponds (grr lucky!). We were on Dive Vic's new boat, which is giant, has heating and a shower so that was pretty cool~~ I never got cold today (water 14-15C depending on the dive)

First dive at Lonsdale Wall and was tough. We ended up calling the dive half way in (my first dive called...) as me and my buddy were also paired with a new diver who struggled with buoyancy so we thought it best we end. Poor guy, I remember what it was like starting up. Only remember one fish as I was too worried about my buddy! I also ended up with a reverse nose squeeze so was diving the whole time with just blood everywhere, all over my face, ewww. I didn't notice though but my buddies were wondering what was up.

Next dive was also hard! At Dragon's Lair but we struggled with strong surge and an absence of any kind of life (other than this long thin shark looking thing).

The finally a great dive at Portsea Pier - saw two weedy sea dragons, lots of puffers, tonnes of crabs having some kind of crab war, a tiny little shark that looked like a sand shark (was so cute!), some pink nudibranches and we found a skate skeleton.

Anyway, my buddy has a camera so hopefully next week I can post some pics of us doing our deep course We'll be diving all weekend for our cert! Can't wait.

Any others diving this weekend?

 

[stiebs]

I headed up to Mt. Gambier this weekend to finish up my deep cavern course, and then check out some of the cavern and sinkhole sites up there. Some photos on my website. Need more practice at this sort of photography!! And probably a decent wide angle lens too.

The first dive (my cert dive) was at Little Blue, with about 1m visibility (and that was before we silted it up!

Saturday we were booked on to Piccaninnie Ponds at the 11am timeslot, which was awesome, with visibility too far to measure. Not much marinelife to see - just one eel, but the rock formations and caverns were great to swim around and through.

Saturday afternoon we dropped into Ewen's Ponds, unfortunately timed really badly after about 30 divers just came out. So it was rather silty. Still was a very pretty dive, especially in the channels between the ponds.

Sunday we couldn't get into One Tree, so instead headed to the backup Little Blue again, running a line in the (better) 2m vis from the cross-roads sign, past the yield, to the no-standing, and turned around at the safe.

Sunday afternoon was my first time at Kilsby's Sinkhole, which is a truly massive hole, which would need at least half a dozen dives to start to get familiar with it. Easily goes down to 65m, but there's plenty of swimthroughs and tunnels all the way up to 15m.

And Monday morning was back for another Kilsby's dive before the drive back to Melbourne.

 

[Sas]

Beautiful pictures froop! I love the first one. I'd be interested to hear more about your cavern course if you have the time.

Also my buddy was up in Ewens Ponds on Saturday too and I heard him mention the term 'upside down helicopters' so I think he had terrible viz too due to some divers before hand. He says it silts up very fast. We're planning to make a trip up there soon so can't wait. Will try to go first thing in the morning for dives though, given how it gets churned up a lot.

 

[stiebs]

Sure.. what do you want to know? If I feel up to it I might do a full write up on my website some time. Your buddy isn't Cal (aka MelbourneDiver from DiveOz). We met him at Ewen's waiting for the crowds to settle just as we were heading off.

 

[Sas]

Haha well I PM'd you a few questions as I thought I better not hijack the thread, so if you have any time to answer a few of them, would appreciate it