Griffo
Contributor
Not to hijack the thread, but am curious as well about diving Sydney. I will be in Australia for 6 weeks Nov, Dec, Jan, mostly visiting family. Spouse is from Sydney and we live in the US. Gonna dive GBR with Mike Ball for a week at beginning of December. Then some family/friend stuff.... From Boxing day till after New Years, rented a house in Freshwater about block off the water. Gonna do some surfing, but also curious about diving. Is it worth diving Sydney after GBR? Will only have 3mm wetsuit is that sufficient to diving in Sydney? Will have my DSLR rig with me, whats the visibility like? Thanks!!
IMHO the diving in Sydney is definitely worth it. Most of the GBR is over-rated, there is some fantastic diving but also a lot of dead sites.
This was posted this week. This is a shore dive near where you are staying in Freshie
You can also join this FB group and check out the photos of many of the popular sites that people post regularly:
SCUBA Dive Sydney
The water should be mid 20's (mid 70's) by the time you are here. Whether you can get away with a 3mm is up to you, but getting a rental (or even dirt-cheap surfing wetsuit) is not an issue. There's a number of great shore-dives near where you are staying, and some great ones not too far in a car.
To save money, you could sign up with a dive-club with one of the stores (Dive Manly, Frog Dive, Pro-Dive). Generally it's a nominal fee, then you can tag along for free to any of their shore dives. Do 2 dives and it's cheaper than paying the "customer" fee. Just rent some cylinders from them, rock up, and do the dive.