gmbaker:
many thanks for the info. I am settled in and now look into these places.
Hey Gary,
Relatively speaking, I think that my being from Toronto, we are from the same area! I too relied heavily on info and advice from the good folks around Scuba Board (and the DiveOz forum already mentioned).
I am staying in Melbourne for four months, so allow me to give you my experiences, from a the perspective of a visitor from the eastern seaboard of North America!
- Diving here is great! Not the best viz in the world, but interesting, and diverse, wrecks are very cool with lots of fish on them
- Shops I have had contact with are all great
- I settled on one shop for all my Mornington/Portsea diving, since it seemed to make sense to get to know one operation, better or worse, than it was to move around a lot
- The shops are not especially "geared" towards the tourism market, and are mostly domestic diver oriented; you will notice subtle differences from say, resort dive shops that are 100% tourism oriented
- I chose to dive with IDC Scuba out of Portsea and have done about 12 dives with them over the last 2 months; we negotiated a long term discount deal for my 4 month stay (including membership into their "Dive Club") as I will be diving with them almost every weekend for four months
- I brought my full arctic style dry suit and a 3 mil full coverage wet suit, but haven't used either (yet), bought a great 5 mil one piece down here, that has served me well so far in temps from 64-68F
- A local’s idea of “cold” may differ from those of us from “north”. You will have to make up your own mind on temperature recommendations.
- Make yourself a little chart with metres to feet and degrees C to F converted and keep it with you! Unless you can quickly convert in your head you may get lost on dive briefings talking about 26m max depths expect temps of around 17!!!
- Seriously, an inability to quickly convert in your head could be a safety issue when communicating during a briefing, so consider keeping a chart handy. I am used to working in Imperial & Metric at the same time, so it wasn’t a big deal for me, but….
- Give up on converting tank pressures in Bars to PSI !!!! It best to communicate about tank pressures/volumes in terms of scale, 1/4, 1/2, full.... I dove with a local fella last weekend, and of course his gauge was in bars and mine PSI, at least the general scale on our analog gauges looked similar, and we were able to agree to dive the "thirds rule" and surface "before the read part on our respective gauges"
- Did four dives in the Eden area over Easter weekend, FANTASTIC!! A bit of a hike, but highly recommend it if you get the chance.
- You are on your own to get used to everyone's accents!!! One caution though:
"
How you going?" is
NOT an inquiry about what method of transportation you are considering for some kind of travel in the near future. It is something akin to "
How are you?" and requires no actual honest response, same as in North America.
Oh, and G’day means, 1) Hello, 2) Goodbye, 3) How you going, 4) Its nice out today, 5) Good Evening, 6) Good morning, 7) Insert greeting of choice here
“No worries” means: 1) Thank you, 2) Please, 3) Yes, 4) No, 5) I am not particularly concerned about that, 6) Insert platitude of choice here.
Enjoy your time in Melbourne! (Oh, and good luck finding a coffee that tastes like home)
Oh ya, one other thing, generally speaking the weather forecast in Melbourne is:
Sunny & Warm and Cold & Windy. Then later on the same day..... You get what I mean very soon. So if you go for a walk one day, take with you: shorts, sandels, ski jacket with winter hood, light slacks, a t-shirt, and a wool sweater, sunglasses and an umbrella, a baseball cap, and some running shoes. That should cover it for the morning walk at least.
.....Rick
