Suggestions for Dec 2013 Diving on GBR

[knucklebusted]

Have a fabulous trip! I hope you get some great dives in.

Plastic is good pretty much everywhere except for some very small shops. I don't usually carry more than $50 in cash with me to cover small purchases like drinks, newspapers and similar. There are plenty of ATMs (cash machines) around, even in the middle of nowhere.

Tipping is not traditional in Australia, but as an American people may expect it, particularly in tourist areas like Cairns. What you do about that is up to you and whether they actually provided 'service', which is still an optional extra in Australia.

Personally I tip formal (ie not coffee shop or fast food) restaurants about 10%, take cab fares up to the nearest $5 amount (they don't earn a lot) and leave it at that. Many of my Aussie friends think this is over-generous. The high prices you pay in Australia include service charges and a reasonable minimum wage. You're not expected to make up the difference so your waiter/cabbie can afford to buy dinner; that's his employer's responsibility. Tips are purely an 'over and above' if you feel like giving one.

Good to know. I'll take the word of a diver that lives there over some folks that have passed through any day.

Just 8 days, 6 hours until departure and double checking all my paperwork and wouldn't you know it, a credit card got frauded yesterday afternoon. Now I have to have a new one issued. Hoping they send it rapidly as it is the one with no foreign transaction fees.

 

[Wobbegong wannabe]

Good luck with your card. Why do these things always seem to happen just when you're going on holidays?

 

[knucklebusted]

Got the new credit card, getting all things packed and loaded. 25 hours before we leave for the airport.

 

[knucklebusted]

Followup now that I've returned, if anyone is interested. Tusa was a great dive op with decent gear and dive computers on every setup but we didn't see as much as I'd hoped. No sharks, no rays and no turtles. We dove twice on a site called Tennis Courts and the other dive was on Tetford Reef, Horse Shoe. We did get to see some clown fish playing in their home anemone.

To appease my wife, we went on the tour-booked 1/2 day to Green Island first. That was a major waste for any diver. The semi-submersible and the snorkeling sea life were pretty sparse. The reef look pretty battered all around at Green Island. I suspect all the action was above sea level there. I'd much rather have booked 2 days of diving with Tusa than wasted a day rushed to Green Island and back.

Note to fellow travelers that haven't been to Oz that are contemplating it, prices are very high compared to US. On the bright side, we are getting AU$1.06 to the US$ about now.

 

[dkr82]

Sad to hear you didn't see any turtles, rays or shark.. Tusa are a good operation tho (for day trips your best choices are Tusa or Silverswift), and unfortunately, it's all really down to how the marine life feels on any given day. Hopefully the rest of your adventure down under made up for the dives.

I just got back from a 3 day live-aboard on ProDive (also completed my Rescue course on day 3, certified at 8.50am on 1/1/14.. (first in the world for 2014??), and we dove Tennis Courts at Flynn Reef twice on the new years eve. My dive log says I saw a turtle on that dive, but the whole trip was a bit of a blur with the rescue course and NYE on board..

We also had at least 3 or 4 other dives at Flynn Reef, not just Tennis Courts, but other sites like Boulders and Coral Garden, where we saw shark and turtle on a drift dive and one snorkel session with my (non-diver) girlfriend where a reef shark was cruising around about 5M below us for 30 seconds. Most dives we saw small blue spotted rays around also.

Sorry you got diverted by Green Island too. It's only there to separate Asian tourists from their money these days. I lived in Cairns from '92-01 and Green Island actually used to be decent for snorkelling, but not for diving. I think overuse and a few massive cyclones have taken their toll on the reef around the island tho.