Takes me a 3 hour drive to Melbourne to dive with pretentious folk who won't deal with you unless you spend money in their dive shop. IF it's not too cold!
Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but the Bay isn't THAT cold! It was 17 degrees (celsius) when I was in the water at Blairgowrie yesterday morning.
I moved to Melbourne only a few months ago, and there are a few dive shops down here that really need to get over themselves and learn to like the idea of having new customers.
That said, I consider that I have
four LDSs:
1. One where I've forked out to become a club member because they're a welcoming bunch, and they're not bad to deal with. They don't have exclusive rights to my business, which I'm not sure goes down entirely well, but they do get first pick, and if they've got what I'm looking for, then they get my money.
2. The nearest shop that does my cylinder fills, mainly because they're handy (I've got expensive toll roads between home and shop 1) and they sell things that I can't get at shop 1.
3. A shop down the Mornington Peninsula where I'm doing tech dive training, mainly because they've got an instructor I'm comfortable with.
4. A shop in Auckland, New Zealand (no, I'm not kidding) who I've dealt with for years, and will probably keep my servicing business because their service techs are outstandingly good.
Back on subject, when I lived in Auckland, we didn't have any quarries nearby, but you could dive in Lake Pupuke. Or if you want to sound really intrepid, go dive in a volcano.
Seriously, it's a flooded volcanic crater that officially bottoms out at 57m when you hit silty goo.
Nothing particularly interesting apart from The Pipes, The Caves (really impressive - they go back a whole 300... millimetres,) an eel that I recall was named Nigel, and some seriously vicious thermoclines in the height of summer, but a busy spot when the weather's bad and you're in need of some hyperbaric nitrogen therapy.
