Oak Park

Oak Park put on its usual magnificence and I had the pleasure to dive with 2 different buddies here.

How good is this place? I am proud to say that this is where I live- pretty special :)

First dive was with a seasoned diver "Richard": We spent almost 60 minutes went out to the cave and saw a few blue groupers, cuttlefish and a bull Ray.

The second dive was with "Rob", who had had a disappointing first dive with a buddy that lasted 20 minutes on a 10L tank. We went out to the cave and a bit beyond. We saw a few Crested Horn Sharks out beyond the cave and the same blue groupers and cuttlefish as on the first dive. Just over the hour for the second dive (61 mins). I was on a 8L tank and still had 80 bar left when we surfaced. I do enjoy social dives and seem to have much better air consumption when I am not concerned for anyone else. Also I think when I am looking after other people I never really get the chance to see how long my air will last as I normally surface before my computer signals the 110 bar turnaround alarm

2 Great dives - I reqally do enjoy Oak Park, it is my favourite dive site in Sydney and rarely dissapoints.

We found this guy a few meters off the shore near the swimming pool. This was before we had even descended on our dive,

Oak Park

I went out to Oak Park, south of Cronulla this weekend. It is my favorite dive site in Sydney and there is always something interesting happening out here.

My buddy was Tim and he helped my make my latest short Epic: Tim & The Titans of Oak Park

I seem to be getting good on my air consumption as the first dive was 1 hour 6 minutes and I still surfaced with 105 bar in the tank. I probably could have stayed down another 25 minutes or so. I was using the 10 litre tanks and I usually only dive with the 7 litre tanks, but as this was a social dive I took the bigger tank.

The visibility closed down a bit on the second dive as it was low tide. The first dive visibility was about 5-6M and the second dive down to 3-4M.

I do like Oak Park and would recommend it to anyone who has never dived there or anyone who is looking for a good shallow dive site on Sydney's doorstep. Max depth 10M.

351+

The Leap

I went diving at The Leap and The Steps in Kurnell National Park on Saturday. Both dives were magical and the second dive reminded me why I love diving.

We saw 3 different species of shark (Wobby, PJ and Crested Horn). We were accompanied most of the time by big Eastern Blue Groupers. We had some fun with cutlefish, saw squid and Weedy Sea Dragons and we found a large Sea Turtle (I think it was a Loggerhead)

I had some fun with a friend making a film short about the leap. Here it is if your interested...

Shark Island Cronulla

Jane with a Hapkido T-Shirt on

This is an OK dive site but the logistics of getting there on a pleasant Saturday morning, with a group of 12 other divers, are challenging. There is no parking, unless you are very lucky and get one of the residents spots. We ended up 3 blocks back from the beach and had about an 800m walk to the Ocean before we started the descent to the beach.
The descent to the beach is challenging but not impossible, it reminds me of the challenges of getting down to Shiprock, although there is no rope here.

Underwater Hapkido - turning swim fall

Once down to the beach there is a moderate surface swim before you get to dive, just in case you hadn't had enough exercise getting there. The surface swim is about 150 -200 M to get to the island, but you can descend before then once you get to the kelp and rocks.

Moray Eel

We headed North and found a few nice things. We saw a Blue Grouper but he quickly disappeared and seemed very shy. I guess they are not used to divers in this area. There seemed to be a lot of stainless steel railing in the water? I'm not sure if at some time they had a fence around the small island or if it has been used as a dumping ground for unwanted railing? Only real photo opportunities came from a moray eel and this Eastern Fiddler Ray.

Eastern Fiddler Ray

Eastern Fiddler Ray

After surfacing we had a large surface swim back to the beach before climbing the rocks and heading off on our 800M walk to change our tanks.
After a very nice lunch on the beach we went for a second dive. After descending we were surprised by a very timid turtle. He must have been startled by the divers ahead of us and swam straight past us in his haste to retreat. By the time I got the camera fired up he was gone so no pictures.

Jane clinging onto a rock in the shallows

Jane and I are wearing Hapkido T-shirts for our club competition to get a photo with a T-shirt on in an unusual place. We stopped in the shallows and Jane was too buoyant so she could not get a photo of me. Here is one of her clinging onto a rock.

Life under a rock

I decided to grab a rock to give her a bit of extra weight and there were hundreds of little spidery starfish underneath. The wrasse came in and fed of most of them but I got a pic of this large one before putting the rock back where it was.
I decided to abandon the idea of getting a photo of me with my T-shirt on, and we headed West across the sand and back to the beach. It is nice to practice underwater navigation skills on a new dive site.

All up an OK dive site, but the logistics of getting there with a large group, make this a tick in the box dive for me and I won't be in too much of a hurry to return to be honest.

305+

Bare Island Advanced Course

3 dives on Bare Islands West side in 2M viz. Peak Performance buoyancy, Underwater Navigation and Underwater Naturalist.
Poor viz means no pics- didn't seem worth it on the day. Winston, Elena, Michael, Jasmine, Donna, Grace and Craig were the students. Johny was DM con-ed.

303+

Open Water- Camp Cove

Brett and I had 6 great open water students this weekend with a murky dive at Bass & Flinders on Saturday followed by a magnificent day at Camp Cove on Sunday.

Maria, Dimitri and me

With all the rain of recent weeks (flooding in NSW) he water clarity was less than optimal. We still managed to have a great dive at Bass & Flinders on Saturday focusing on the small stuff. We found Gus the big grouper (or should I say he found us) and we had a brief interaction with him. We also saw a Moray Eel, cuttlefish, goat fish and lots of stripies. There were a few curious Bream in the water too but I think they were lured by the fishermen in the rocks and their burley.

Blake, Dave,Jess, Brett and Christian

Sunday we had 3 dives at Camp Cove and Sydney put on a magnificent end of Summer day for us. The water had cleaned up considerably as well and we had 6-8M viz.

300+

1/2 OW course + Voodoo + Clean Up Australia Day

I did 1/2 an open water course with Kevin and Yinjang (who could not swim)

 Next day I got pulled off the OW course to go DM at Voodoo. The shore dive numbers are really swelling up and Voodoo is a big draw card.

This week I went onto clean up Australia day with the Commonwealth Bank staff as a safety support person. Lots of fun and a nice group of people.

I went for a 50 minute dive with Nelson and Mark around Chowder Bay, which was a lot cleaner than we expected.

296+

SS Bombo and Pig Island

There was a nice break in the recent wet weather to give us an excellent weekend for diving. Jane and I headed down to picturesque Wollongong Harbour for a trip out to the SS Bombo and Pig Island.

Jane climbing from the boat in picturesque Wollongong Harbour

I encountered a few equipment issues on the first dive: My new Aeris Epic dive computer, with wireless tank pressure transmitter, went into free dive mode. This meant once I got down to about 2M I could not see my tank pressure as it thought I was free diving. Despite 3 resurfacing attempts to correct the problem I could not get it back to the correct state for Scuba diving. I asked Jamie but he was not sure about it either so I got back on the boat.

Jane waiting patiently for me to get my computer sorted.

Back on the boat once it was dried I was able to change the mode to Scuba and went for my first dive. I really need to get a lot more familiar with the settings on this computer as that was nearly a dive cancellation.

Jane descending the anchor line to the SS Bombo

At about 14M deep there was a big thermal drop of almost 6 degrees Celsius. My dive computer registered the temperature on the wreck at 13.3 degrees Celsius.At the surface it was 18.7 C. The big temperature drop caused my camera to fog up on the inside of the lens as can be seen on the picture below. I do have a desiccant bag inside the housing but maybe it was just too big a temp change?

Jane on the propeller of the SS Bombo

Jane likes wrecks and enjoys posing around propellers. As we went towards the bow of the wreck I saw something very large and very fast moving through the gap between the break in the bow and the stern. I only saw the tail moving into the obscurity of the visibility but it was a shark of some sort and judging by the size of the tail at least 3M long. It was not a Wobby as it was sort of Grey/brown in colour. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and it was big and then it was gone, moving very quickly. I have no idea what it was but I haven't seen a fish that big moving that fast before.

Janes gloved hand next to a starfish

 For the second dive we went out to Pig Island, where there are magnificent sponge gardens

Sea Squirts

There were lots of fish and a huge school of Bream were attracted to our bubbles and surrounded us .

In the middle of a school of fish

Jane started to sing underwater ("Octopus's Garden" as I recall), her confidence in the water is really growing.

A large finger sponge

Bull Ray

We saw a large Bull Ray swimming by, I gave chase to try to get a picture but he was very shy and gently flew away

Jane over the Kelp

Climbing out of the boat up the Harbour wall.

When we returned the tide was completely out and we had to climb up the harbor wall to get out. No problem for Navy Seals such as ourselves :)

I really enjoy Wollongong and wish I could get down there more often. It has great diving and such a nice seaside town feel and it is about 1 hour closer than the Central Coast. We had Fish & Chips overlooking the harbour before returning to Sydney.

SS Bombo dive profile

Pig Island dive profile

289+

HMAS Adelaide and Bare Island Advanced Course

287

Wreck of The Tasman Hauler, Eden NSW

WRECK NAME:	Tasman Hauler
SHIP TYPE:	Tug	SANK IN:	1988
LOCATION:	Eden	CONSTRUCTION:	Steel
TRAVEL TIME:	15 Minutes	DIVE RATING:	Advanced
MAX DEPTH:	30 Metres	AVG DEPTH:	19 Metres
AVERAGE VIZ:	12 Metres	ACCESS VIA:	BOAT

On 6 July 1988, the Tasman Hauler was stranded on rocks at Twofold Bay (presumably after dragging or breaking its mooring). She was re-floated and was soon after declared a total loss.

Tasman Hauler docked

 The Tasman Hauler and Henry Bolte were purchased by the then Eden dive operator, Gary Becus, for $1 each.  On 1 October 1988, he sank the Tasman Hauler and around the same time the Henry Bolte just south of Red Point off Ben Boyd National Park to start artificial reefs and to provide alternate wreck dives for his divers. Located only a few hundred metres apart, it is less than a 10 minute run south from Eden across Twofold Bay to either tug.

Tasman Hauler on a slipway

 The above information taken from various sources (mostly Michale McFadyen's website)

We stayed with Merimbula Divers Lodge who I can highly recommend. The accommodation was "cosy" with 4 bunks to a room and 2 rooms to a unit but it was very clean and well maintained.

Jane in between dives

The boat trip out from Eden Wharf is about 10 minutes (provided by Merimbula Divers Lodge) and was quite bouncy but not overly unpleasant.

Jamie, Lin, Jen and James on board the ScubaPro inflatable

 The wreck is pretty much still in tact (apart from some handrail on the top - but I'll leave that between myself, Jane, Kellie and Ben)

Jane on the main deck looking through a porthole

 I think Jane experienced her first bout of Nitrogen Narcosis without realising it. At Oak Park or Bare Island in 8M of water she likes to stick very close to me. I often feel here holding onto my BCD or arm.

Jane relaxing on the rear deck

 At 30M she was very relaxed and wanted to explore the vessel with an more adventurous nature than at 8M.

Jane posing on the propeller drive shaft next to the shroud

 The Tasman Hauler's propeller  is surrounded by a shroud that directs the thrust as the prop itself swivels so there is no need for a rudder.

A more relaxed Jane than usual @ 30M

This is a great wreck dive and the visibility was about 15M which I believe ids about average in this part of the world. It is not too difficult as it was scuttled with divers in mind so most hazards have been removed. After the HMAS Adelaide this would be one of the most complete wreck dives in NSW in my opinion.

Jane at the propeller of the Tasman Hauler (~30M deep)

It was a great trip with a great group of people. I would highly recommend this trip to anyone who hasn't yet explored the magical dives of the South Coast.

Broulee Cave. NSW South Coast Diving

Australia Day long weekend 2012 and we headed down to Eden for a wreck diving extravaganza.
On the way down the coast just south of Batemans Bay is great little dive site at Broulee.
Broulee is inbetween Mogo and Moruya on the coast off the highway

You park as close to the Ocean as the road will allow, there is a small carp park at the end of the road. At the end of the car park are some steps and you head SSE to any suitable entry point. The cave location is shown approximately here.




View Broulee Cave in a larger map 

This is a great little cave dive and is suitable for open water divers and above. We found a 2 meter long Wobbygong  shark in the cave and he wasn't too happy with the attention he got from 16 scuba divers.

 

Jane gearing up!

 This is a great dive and if you are traveling along the South Coast of NSW I would highly recommend a visit here.

Kellie pointing to the cave from the car park steps

16 of us on the trek to the ocean

Friendly sting ray

Not so friendly sting ray

Ben at the beach exit

 The exit is on the beach and there is a nice little shallow swim around an interesting reef to get there.

Bare Island

Double dive at Bare Island with Jane trying out her new Delta regulator and a Hera BCD.

Bare Island pre-dive briefing

Jane getting ready in the new car park

kitted out with all the new gear

Nudibeanc

Friendly and hungry Moray eel

Nudibranc

In between dives R&R

You looking at me?