Howdy- Great Barrier Reef with kids?

[schminsk]

Greetings from cool, green NC mountains!

I'm a PADI OW diver back from Panama City, FL's bridge span 14 site.
A six-foot 'cuda, table-size snoozing turtle at the bottom, large jewfish, and lots of characters spun and woven around the cross-hair weave of span struts... in the middle of flat unreefed sand. Awesome for night dive!

First-ever opportunity coming up, need help.
We go to Sydney/Gold Coast July 07 for kids choral festival, and need help with diving GBR opportunities. Parents PADI cert. Mark, 11, just got jr OW PADI cert. Our youngest, 10 by July, isn't, but could happily snorkel with cap'n & crew.

Questions:
1. Do we go check Cairns to get quality liveaboard op?
2. Are liveaboards worth the bucks?
3. Do we get what we pay for in terms of making sure its a great operation?
4. Can a great dive op still cater to kids?

Thanks--
Sandra Hayes
Waynesville, NC
schminsk@bellsouth.net

 

[k4man]

Sounds like you have quite the trip planned--Good luck and Welcome to ScubaBoard!

 

[Fordan]

Greetings from cool, green NC mountains!

Welcome to :sblogo:

First-ever opportunity coming up, need help.
We go to Sydney/Gold Coast July 07 for kids choral festival, and need help with diving GBR opportunities. Parents PADI cert. Mark, 11, just got jr OW PADI cert. Our youngest, 10 by July, isn't, but could happily snorkel with cap'n & crew.

Questions:
1. Do we go check Cairns to get quality liveaboard op?
2. Are liveaboards worth the bucks?
3. Do we get what we pay for in terms of making sure its a great operation?
4. Can a great dive op still cater to kids?

You may want to look at the Australia & the Pacific Islands Travel section at http://www.scubaboard.com/forumdisplay.php?f=27, where you'll probably get more attention for your specific questions. One thread that seems to be relevent would be the one at http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=167219, but doing searches for "Cairns" or "Liveaboard" in the forum would probably net you lots of opinions.

I did a liveaboard at the GBR back Sept/Oct timeframe (ScubaPro out of Cairns). I enjoyed it a lot; lots of diving for not a huge amount of money. If your plan is to dive, dive, dive, it's hard to beat a liveaboard.

 

[DandyDon]

I think you need to ask on the Australia forum, and using complete sentances will help.

It does help with discussions if you complete your Profile. And it's even more fun when you load an Avatar (personal pic for each post) and a Profile pic. See UserCP to access these if you'd like to...?

If you haven't yet, click Forums above and start going thru the list - looking for those of interest to you, especially your local dive club. Always good to try a Search before starting a new thread, tho and be careful about posting Replies without reading the Stickies for each forum. Click the link in my Sig below to PM me if I can help you around here..

don

 

[snepdiver]

Welcome to ScubaBoard. Good to have you with us.

 

[Jason Ooi]

Welcome to :sblogo:
:wave-smil :wave-smil

 

[mred]

Welcome to the SB... I LOVE Australia. Brisbane is sweet!!! Check out the Australia Zoo (the sadly, late Steve Erwin zoo just outside Brisbane) They the the Darwin Turtle there !

As for diving the Great Barrier reef ... keep in mind it is HUGE, and stretches for miles and miles and miles ...

Most of the more interesting destinations on the reef are NOT going to make great day trips however, as they are too far out to make be a good trip, so your best bet would be to do a live aboard ... this having been said, if you go south of Brisbane to the Gold coast (aka surfers paradise etc.) then there are some dive operations that do day trips and there are some good diving with out the expense of a live aboard.

This having been said: you DO KNOW that July will be WINTER down under? And in July the water temps will drop to 62 - 68 degrees??? You may want to pack your dry suits!

 

[Andrew Jones]

Carmen has all the answers for diving options with children

www.scubadive.com.au