Blog 19 – Bucket list win - Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

This may be a short blog – there are just no words to describe how lucky we were today.

We were picked up at 7am (eek!) to transfer to the harbour and join our boat.

Our trip was organised by Sightseeing Tours Australia and they could not have been more helpful, from the time of booking to us being dropped off. We requested prescription goggles for Emily, and they were provided at no extra charge. We also booked the additional Top Deck experience – mainly because this offered concierge service, which meant that we had our own person, Hannah, who looked after us on the boat. It also upgraded our meals (from a bacon buttie to a full English breakfast, and individually cooked lunch in stead of a sandwich, plus sparkling wine on the return boat trip).

Hannah was also our dive buddy, so she saw to all of our equipment, and we had 2 personalised dives guided by her. It was SOOOOOO well worth the additional charge – especially as that charge was only $125 each. We also were given complementary towels to use for the day, which was a welcome extra.

When we got to the boat, Hannah approached us, and at first we were confused as to how she knew it was us, but there were not many other mother daughter combos – and none of our age 😊. I guess no matter how much Emily does not think it is so, there is a family resemblance!

It took about 90 minutes to get out to the Reef – I was surprised at that, as in the Whitsundays it was much closer. The big difference was this was on an actual boat - we went to the Whitsundays on a catamaran, and that was a much smoother trip - needless to say I was regretting the full english breakkie....

We had a bit of a wait to dive, as there were so many people on the boat, (another plus for the 'Top Deck' experience as we had our own dedicated area of the boat!) so had a bonus 40 mins snorkel!

The reef was just so much ‘more’ than the Whitsundays. By that I mean it was bigger, more established, more impressive it just felt more… The water was clearer at the Whitsundays, so you could see further, and there were not as many people there, so it felt much calmer. There was also more of a current here - if I've picked the right bit of video, you can see even the fish are going backwards at certain points... The crackling sound you can hear is the fish nibbling the coral

The first dive was fabulous, we got to see the reef close up, and on the second dive we got to go much deeper. As not as many people did two dives, we did feel as if we had the place to ourselves. It is a huge tick off my bucket list.

Like I said, there are not enough words to describe the reef, or the experience, I will try and load a video below to give you a flavour.

My new favourite fact is that 30% of the sand on and around the GBR is actually from parrot fish poo! They nibble on the coral, but cannot digest it, so they break it down into tiny particles and poo it out as sand…. The grating sound you can hear on the video is them nibbling the coral.

After our dives we returned to the boat for the transfer back to harbour – I have to say that although the crew said the sea was calm, I was a bit queasy – perhaps the personalised meals had not been such a good idea….. actually, although we have been back a couple of hours, I am still rocking as I type!

Still, today was bliss. One day left.