Aussie Diving 1 to 15 April, 2010

[Sas]

Joti, lovely pictures! Welcome to the Australia forum!

Phillip Island...twist my rubber arm! See you in December...

Sweet

This weekend I went back to Mt Gambier for a bunch of dives though I only took my camera on one dive. We were going to dive the Shaft but we need a guide and no one showed up! Was so excited but oh well guess I will have to try again.

Here are some photos of a site called One Tree. It is a sinkhole on a farm and we were lucky that the landowner was home so we got to dive it both days (he needs to be there to give us the key to get in).

This site has excellent viz at the bottom though very murky at the top. It's a weird kind of landscape and there is heaps of barb wire at the bottom, an old harvester, and a car.

Here is the entry/exit point, I find it hard getting my twins up there but it is getting easier :

Someone has placed some kind of animal skull on the harvester at the bottom of this hole, there are a few around! Spooky

Upside down car

Yabbie at 40m, tough one hey

I am back up again in two weeks! My buddy convinced me to do Cave then. A bit nervous but will see how I go

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Sas I can't believe that you not only convinced him but got him to help with the funds :dropmouth:

 

[bfowles]

No worries, me + petunia have Sony P93s so P&S photos/videos are definitely welcome too here

I'll have to watch the video when I get home from work (blocked...:\), sounds interesting



25 dives in five weeks is a good effort!!!

AFAIK there is no local dealer for Fusions but I have seen one guy with one. Underwater Ogre loaned me his when he visited but unfortunately the neck seal was too big for my pencil neck Everyone I know who has one loves them.

Scubapro are now selling the fusions so it should be a lot easier to find places in Australia selling them. FUSION - SCUBAPRO-UWATEC

Another good drysuit to consider is the Santi, they are made to custom sizes and are a lot cheaper than DUI. Santi also make great customised undersuits.

The guy wearing the fusion drysuit was probably me, I haven't seen anyone else in Melbourne wearing one yet.

Byron

 

[Sas]

Oh yep I saw those suits at a shop recently! Forgot SP are selling them too. Nah it wasn't you, his name was Luke!

 

[tome]

was off philip island over Easter,viz wasn't amazing but it was rather cold ( 16 at the pinnacles) we went off chasing crays but to no avail!always a great feeling dropping in through soup with no reference for 20 odd meters hahah. planning to head to lonsdale wall this week or next depending on weather/time etc.

 

[Underwater Ogre]

Scubapro are now selling the fusions so it should be a lot easier to find places in Australia selling them. FUSION - SCUBAPRO-UWATEC

Another good drysuit to consider is the Santi, they are made to custom sizes and are a lot cheaper than DUI. Santi also make great customised undersuits.

The guy wearing the fusion drysuit was probably me, I haven't seen anyone else in Melbourne wearing one yet.

Byron

Let me know if you want a Fusion...I get smokin deals on em, even with the exchange and the shipping...the nice part is the sizing is easy! I just installed my new tech skin tonight...cant wait to dive it.

 

[Gudge]

We got out for two dives last Sunday in Lighthouse Bay. The water was still cold (around 5°C cooler than it has any right to be at this time of year) and dirty so I left the 100 macro/close-up lens on from Easter and went on a critter hunt. We found lots of the usual suspects that loiter with intent on Ningaloo:

The odd nudi:

A few shrimps:

Some fish:

And an octopus:

 

[Underwater Ogre]

Gudge....your picture are amazing. Thank you for sharing them with us. Every time I log on and my wife is around she says... "whats has that guy posted lately?"

Thanks again,
U/O

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Thanks for the shots everyone... love our work as usual Gudge:worship: I really love the frogmouth.. their expression is so grumpy!

A few new faces.. umm avatars around.. great to hear from others about what they are up to

 

[Sas]

I got out for a dive last night with my buddy Michael, mr burna + another friend Phil. Me + Michael buddied up so I could practice for Cave. Started off badly as we couldn't time the buddy breathing right (we were doing an exercise where we have our masks off, are buddy breathing + me reeling in line as this is the stress test for Cave) but it went pretty well by the end though I definitely need more practice at this just to get my buoyancy right when I haven't got a reg in my mouth - I really use my lungs a lot to control my position! Then I did stuff with a blacked out mask (much easier than I expected) though at the end when I reached the end of the line I started waving my torch around to get Michael to give me my non-blacked out mask back. Waited a bit... no response, could see his light saying ok when I took my blacked out mask off, waited a bit longer and was going to start trying to peel all the tape off my mask and then eventually he swum over and made my hand into a thumb to ascend. We ascended and he told me he lost my mask I had to wait on the surface whilst he found my mask again.

Then I did some more mask off practice and there was one point where there were all these lights flashing everywhere but I knew Michael was ok so I ignored it. When I finished and stuck my mask on the entire place was silted out to crap and I was thinking 'did I do that???' and was wondering how as I didn't feel like I'd kicked anything but it turned out there was a group of about eight divers all swimming vertically just kicking everything in site and Michael said they were kicking him in the head and also swimming over to me and shining their torches at me to see what I was doing and just generally getting in the way I saw them on the way back :shocked2: Disaster zone. Then we swum around for another 25mins or so to do a total time of 83mins. I was very cold by the end having had my mask off for almost an hour, and the water had dropped 3C to 17C since I dived last. I got to see a few blue rings (kind of disturbing to see them crawling along the ground where I was doing line work with no mask!) and a cuttlefish. Burna + Phil saw a GIANT Maori octopus too.

And the viz was very good for this site at about 10m!