Possible trip to Australia!!

[Capt Grumby]

Hello everyone! My wife and I are contemplating a vacation to Australia in a few months. Since neither of us have ever been there, I was hoping that some of you could give me your input as to the types of diving I might expect.
If we decide to go, we would be staying with friends. One family lives in Perth, and the other lives in Melbourne. I have heard that Australia boasts world-class diving, but I was hoping to get a bit more detail than the typical tourist-brochure hype.
Any and all information you can give will be apprieciated, as I like to be prepared.

Oh, sorry about the mis-spelling in the title! I got in a hurry!

 

[mig_diver]

Come up to Queensland, its warmer here and we have the Great Barrier Reef

Although Perth does get the whale sharks, or so I've heard

 

[alcina]

Close, but not too close! Perth does have some great diving and their season starts around September as does the diving season further south. There are some cool wrecks, sea lions, reef structures and dolphins in Perth and down south. Perth does not get whale sharks

You might want to check out the Western Australian Visitor's Centre or do some searching on google for Perth, Albany, Dunsborough, Bunbury, SWAN wreck, PERTH wreck for options in Perth and south of Perth.

For whale sharks, you need to travel about 1200kms north of Perth to the Ningaloo Reef and you need to do it between April - July (earlier in July is better than later!). The whale shark are rocking right now and we expect to have a great season until at least the end of the first week of July. Last year the sharks were here really late - all the way to the first week of August - very unusual!

There is excellent diving on the Ningaloo Reef all year round if you are coming outside of those months - we don't have a "dive season" like those farther south. You can have a little look-see at some of what the Ningaloo has to offer by searching the UW Photo area for Ningaloo in the subject line as I always try to tag my photo posts with it to make things easy. My signature has links to some recent photos, my out-of-date uw photo web site and to my diving company's web site. There is also a tourist bureau in Exmouth that you may want to check out for more information.

Hope this helps get you started!

 

[mig_diver]

My mistake

I tend to forget there are other cities within states. In NSW there is only Sydney, VIC - Melbourne, WA - Perth, etc. Sorry...