Diving Sydney and South West Rocks April 2007

As you all know Markus and I now live in Dee Why. We have also finally started diving in the weekends like we were hoping for. There are in fact quite a few interesting dive spots right where we live in Sydney. What we've found most supprising is the vast variety of marine life. Above all, we have seen many species we've never encountered before. My personal favourite if the Weedy Seadragon, which is on the picture above. As you can see it is about 20 cm long and has very cute mini fins which it uses to swim. It is a rather slow animal however. It's also very colourful but prefers to hang out in the sea weed.

Another favourite of ours is the cuttlefish. It looks a little bit like a mix between a squid and an elephant. The best thing about this fish is that it can change its colour to match the environment. It does however have a red base colour.

Our final favourite is part of the shark family. It does however not look that much like a shark and is a little difficult to spot. It is called a wobelligong shark.

There are also many other fish, such as rays, squids, smaller fish and the blue groupers. Some of the blue groupers are really friendly and after playing with a really big one for some time it followed us for the rest of our dive.

We spent easter at South West Rock, a little town about 6 hours drive north of Sydney. We went there with five other people from Manly Divecenter. The town was very nice and we had a lot of fun. We were unfortunately a little bit unfortunate with the weather and we had 30-40 knots wind and a 3 meter swell in our first day. We did not make it into the cave, which was our target and some people were even seasick under the water, as the waves seemed to be rather large there too.

I have to admit, I was also rather scared on the boat, as I believe the weather was soo bad the trip propably should have been cancelled. The second days the waves had however gone down to about two meters and we went to a place called Green Island, where we saw a lot of marine life and a turtle. The best dive was however on day three when we finally made it into the cave. It was definitely worth all the trouble!!! The cave was about 100 metres long and filled with fish, crayfish, rays and sharks. Additionally it was so long that there was no natural light in a very large part of it, which we found rather exciting. Coming out of the cave, there was a lot of grey nurse sharks circuling the exit. We loved the dive so much we did both dives there that day.

Settled in Sydney

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all well. Sorry we have not posted anything in quite some time. Markus and I are however fully set in Sydney now. We live by a beach called Dee Why, which is one of the northern beaches and about 10 minutes drive north of Manly for those of you who have been there. I am studying at Macquarie University and am enjoying it even though there is quite a big workload despite the fact that I do not really learn anything except for how to memorize long things and various things about the Asian culture. About 90% of the people in my class are Asian and the rest is exchange students from all around the world. I do not know why but the Australians do not seem that interested in studying finance at the master level. One day a week I have a class in Manly at ICM, which is a big beautiful castle overlooking the beach and surrounded by large gardens. Nicole Kidman actually had her wedding reception there. You really cannot complain about the location, even though the course is extremely unstructured.

Markus got a really good job as a customized joiner at a firm called Debrich. He puts up custom-made architecturally designed interiors in very rich peoples houses. Since we got here he has been working away from home, in a town called Collecta, about half of the time. Collecta is a real Australian town and you are really in the outback. Fortunately he has been home in the weekends.

In the beginning we did not have that much time to do fun things in the weekends as there were a lot of administrative getting-started things that took a lot of time and money. Now we are however almost done with all of that, with buying a white Pajero as our latest move.

The last couple of weekends we have been at the beach, either here in Dee Why, or in Manly or at Shelly Beach.

Dee Why beach is really beautiful and long and ends with a golf course on a peninsula that leads you to the next beach. It is perfect for walks and there are always healthy people (not us) jogging along the beach. What is nice about the beach is that it is not too crowded. Manly is really nice with lots of shops and restaurants but also a lot of people everywhere. We are however planning on moving there when I start working in September as you can take a ferry and be in town in 15 minutes. At the moment I am commuting to school for about 4 hours per day, which is getting pretty tiring.

Hideaway Island

We spent our last day on a small island called Hideaway Island, just of the capital of Vanuatu, Port Vila on the island of Efate. Port Vila was really big in comparison to Luganville, even though it was still very small with just a few quite primitive shops and restaurants. We went into Port Vila to watch the fruit market which was open 24 hours per day and sold a lot of fruit and vegetables neither one of us had ever seen before. In the afternoon we snorkelled and visited the worlds only underwater post office at about three metres depth. We also posted some postcards and looked at some more fish. One fish was biting my hair tie quite hard which was a bit funny and scary.




We snorkelled until it got dark and then we had a big nice dinner. We both really enjoyed snorkling at Hideaway Island and especially all the different types of anenomy fish we saw there.

Local Village

Our final excursion was with a guide to a local village, where we were shown all the traditional methods of making food and clothes in Vanuatu. Unfortunately they could not perform any songs or dances as a chief of one of the other villages had died 10 days prior. We also had cava, a narcotic drug together with the chief which symbolises us becoming friends. I did not really want to take it as the hygiene did not look to good but we had to out of respect, and as expected I got rather sick and had to go on antibiotics back in Auckland. What was really amazing about our whole trip to Espiritu Santo is how little tourists there were there. Going there and leaving we were the only non islanders on the plane. There was hardly anything arranged for tourists in the little town of Luganville, only the dive centers and some non-existing food stores and a fruit market. Everyone was also really happy to see you and we quite often felt stared at. We believe it was really nice to enjoy the south pacific like this, hence like it used to be before a lot of it became very exploited with lots of resorts.

Charlies & Cindys reef

I and Annika are not as keen on wrecks as the guys, so on the last diving day we all decided to do some coral diving. We went with Aquamarine Divecenter as Allan Powers’s boat was broken. The corals were very beautiful but relatively new and not too colour full. We went to two spots, Charlie’s reef and Cindy’s reef. Charlie’s reef had much more corals and also seemed to be a very large reef. Some corals got really big in this place as you can see. The second dive was at Cindy’s reef, which had more fish and was rather rich in Clams. The island you can see is Aore Island, which is just opposite to Luganville, where we stayed.

Blue Hole

Except for diving we did two excursions. The first one was to a freshwater spring called the Blue Holes. We asked to rent the guides car as we thought it would be more fun to go by ourselves. The only problem was that there were no road signs or notices once you got in to a certain area, so it took us a little while to find the water in the middle of the jungle. Going around Santo there were quite a few signs of WWII. The roads that were now rather bad seemed in fact to have been pretty good in the past, judging by the concrete marks. We also saw several supply sheds and landingfields. Even more clear was the effect on the natural environment. The whole rainforest was covered in "military cover leaves" and mostly looked like a large Paintball zone. Anders and Markus were both running around checking the roads and surroundings while I and Annika were sitting in the car eating cookies. We dived in the holes and the visibility was really amazing. You could in fact see the leaves in the trees when looking up from 18 metres depth. Above you can see some of the photos on Anders practicing UW photogtraphy, as well as a self portrait by Markus.

After the Blue Holes we drove on to a beach called Champagne beach, which is on the north-eastern side of the island. The beach is supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the Pacific and the sand grains were very small and white. It was really nice to go for a swim!