Flip Top Bin: Townsville Great Barrier Reef scuba diving on the Yongala

Mel and I headed up to Townsville for the first week of the school holidays so that Mel could earn her PADI Open Water qualification. I already did this same course in (cough) 2000 but haven't been able to do much diving since. So it was a bit of a refresher for me as well as another chance to dive the beautiful Great Barrier Reef and also the wreck of the SS Yongala.

So we headed out early Saturday morning with a flight to Brisbane that got us there about 8am. We then had 12 hours to check out Brisbane before our flight up to Townsville later that night due to a bit of a booking stuff up by me (I thought it said "Arrive Townsville 9am not 9pm!) But Brisbane is a cool city and we enjoyed our impromptu stopover.

As always you can click the photos to see bigger versions of them...

This is a "Beach" that they have constructed along the "South Bank" of the river in Brisbane. It's not natural at all but it would be a great place in the summer. Too cold when we were there.

It's a really pretty spot, this is also the last known photo of that hat before it met it's municipal demise.

This whole area was wiped out in the floods that happened early this year. They have done a great job of rebuilding.

This is the boat that Jessica Watson sailed solo around the world on, as a 16 year old! The youngest person to ever do that. The boat is not much bigger than a VW Kombi!

Coincidentally it was "Tartan Day" in Brisbane! So Mel couldn't resist the Irn Bru.

We spent the afternoon drinking by the river which reminded us both of a slower paced River Thames and the summer evenings we spent together when we first met. Then we headed back to the airport and on to Townsville.

Can you see the green tree frog on the back deck at Mum and Dad's?

So Mel's PADI training began in this pool:

It's at a place called Adrenalin Dive in Townsville. It's a purpose built pool with portholes in the shop that you can see into the pool! The training here was brilliant with 2 mornings in the classroom and 2 afternoons in the pool. Some officials arrived late on the first day to declare this pool the coldest place on earth. There was a little ceremony.

Mel made me delete the photo that was here of her in the pool but I will email it to you if you want!

This was our little group that graduated from the pool and theory lessons. Me, Mel, Cordelia (from Townsville) and Dorit and Dan from Germany. As well as us there were 9 other people on the boat and 5 crew. 8 of the other divers had a lot of experience and some of them were using Nitrox (a special mix for longer deep dives) on the wreck of the SS Yongala.

We boarded the mighty MV Sea-Esta with all of our diving gear...

All of our tanks and gear (you can see the nitrox in a special crate on the right hand side of this photo).

So we set off on the MV Sea-Esta on the Tuesday night about 9pm (I didn't take the photo below) for the 6 or so hour trip out to the reef.

We woke up the next morning to this...

Pure Blue water. Like some sort of blue crystal. It was about 15 metres deep and you could see the bottom clearly from the surface. Oh, and unlike the pool, the temperature of the water was between 20 and 23 celcius.

A nice cup of ginger tea to ward off sea sickness - not that it was needed as it was this calm the whole time! Like a lake.

The first place that we stopped was called Wheeler Reef.

View Larger Map

It's a small Reef located about 38 miles or so off Townsville. If you click the "minus" symbol on that map you can see how far away it is... and it also puts into perspective how massive the Great Barrier Reef is. If you click this link it might help more

Our first dive was in a very strong current and Mel thought she was going to get washed away. She felt better when we swam back to the boat and some of the really experienced divers had to be picked up in the tender because they had been carried off in the strong current.

We saw a few cool fish on this dive though. A Lion fish, a barracuda, and some great coral.

I didn't take this picture of the lion fish but they are beautiful. I seemed to have an eye for them as Mel and I were the only ones on the boat to spot them on this dive and then I found another one the next day! Oh, and yes they are extremely poisonous!

The second dive we did was a "drift dive" so we all jumped in the water with a marker float and just drifted through the coral with the current. This was a brilliant dive! We saw so much because we could move quite swiftly through the reef. I saw a chinese footballer cod, loads of fish and some great coral. Mel's confidence was restored!

After the drift dive we moved a short distance to the other side of the reef. We needed a fairly long surface interval (in order to avoid decompression sickness) after the two morning dives so we had some time for a bit of snorkelling.

I used a case for my iPhone that can go underwater for up to about 5 metres to take the underwater photos. It's actually a really good case and for only about $20 beats the expensive underwater gear you can get. We couldn't take it on the suba dives, it was only good for snorkelling on the surface.

So me and Dan headed out for a snorkel in between dives. You can see the coral cay in the top corner of this photo.

The water was beautiful and clear with lots of life even in the shallows.

They call that soccer ball shaped coral a "brain coral". If you zoom in it looks like a brain!

I thought I could hear the whales singing to each other in the background as we snorkelled along.

Wheeler Reef has a perfect Sand Cay. It's the ultimate deserted island surrounded by beautiful coral.

Gallagher, the ships mate, was good enough to take us over to the Sand Cay in the tender.

Boats! That's the MV Sea-Esta in the background, the "mother-ship".

The surface was covered in coral (and bird shit!) - Wheeler Reef is a Green Zone though so no souvenirs from here! You are not allowed to take ANYTHING out of the green zones.

When we got back to the boat, me and Gallagher went for another snorkel as well.

A few folk on the boat were impressed that I took that photo with my iPhone!

Dorit and Dan swotted up on their theory as we moved to our next dive spot!

So as we geared up for an afternoon dive, two whales popped up about 5 metres from the boat! They were too quick for our cameras this time though! The next dive was great as we saw some big Coral Trout, some clown fish in their anenomes and a big cod. As well as some coral that had been damaged by the recent Cyclone Yasi. The reef has already begun to recover though.

Here's a picture of a coral trout (I didn't take this photo but I thought I should include it as they are beautiful!):

Our next dive was the fourth and last dive for the day at dusk. We saw some more great fish and coral as well as a huge Moray Eel that Luke, our instructor found.

The more experienced divers on board had a night dive after this while we watched from on board.

But they missed this sunset while they were underwater!

The Sea was just so calm.

They also missed out on first dibs to dinner!

The food on the boat was plentiful and good. There was food after every dive which was great.

Overnight we moved to a new reef called Davies Reef. This reef is a yellow zone which means you are allowed to fish! Not that we had any fishing gear on board and actually diving this reef makes you wonder how people are allowed to fish because it is beautiful. Not many coral trout here though as they must have all been caught. :(

Here's a map showing the two reefs that we visited at the top (both circled) and the wreck of the SS Yongala circled at the bottom as well as the different coloured zones.

The Sunrise out there is just amazing.

I was usually the first one up in the morning.

Big schools of fish swam under the boat.

So we stopped on a big bommie on Davies Reef they call The Lions Den. It's supposed to have lots of Lion fish but nobody on the boat saw one! We did see a massive Manta Ray as we were descending as well as another Chinese Footballer Cod (a different coloured one this time) some awesome coral swim throughs and a few big potato cod near the bottom.

The Chinese Footballer Fish or Blue Spot Cod as some people call it is an awesome fish. They change from being white and yellow and black banded (Chinese Footballer colours) to be red with blue spots a lot like the coral trout. They also change sex as they get older from females when they are young to males when they get to about 40cm.

If you can imagine this bommie is like a mountain of coral, the top of the mountain is about 5m below the surface and maybe 10m diameter and the bottom of the mountain spreads out and goes as deep as 50m or more. We went "down" the mountain about 19m to a couple of big cracks and crevices that have formed.

There were some parrot fish and some clown fish here too. Here's someone elses picture of clown fish...

We then moved to another spot on the same reef. This was a really nice dive. We saw the most enormous giant clam (I think it was this one)

It was as big as me!

After this dive we headed to a place on Davies Reef that they call "The Maze". This was our favourite dive I think because there was just so much to see.

Here is someone elses picture of the maze:

It's absolutely covered in life and is a huge collection of different coral bommies and caves and swim throughs. Such a wide variety. We had been in the water about 30 seconds when I spotted another Lion fish and pointed it out to everyone else in our group (who had just swum right over it!). This one was a juvenile though so it was black not orange like the other one.

Mel really liked these blue starfish which are big - about as big as my head...

We also saw a Barramundi Cod ... (not my photo)

Probably my favourite thing was the shrimp fish... These fish swim vertically! They were in this piece of coral that looked like a tree and at first they just looked like leaves on a tree, swaying in the current. A closer look revealed that they were actually fish!! Here's a photo of them at the maze and below someone elses video of them swimming in a tank...

and here is a video of them swimming in a tank. They swim in such a funny way...

We were all buzzing after this dive. Absolutely my favourite spot. So we waited a few hours and we had a night dive at about 6pm. Mel wasn't up for it and it was a little difficult to see so she didn't miss much. I saw a really nice painted crayfish and a couple of cat sharks. It's also good fun to turn your torch off when you are 15m underwater and it becomes pitch black!

So that was the last of our dives on the reefs. We then started the 6 hour slog to the Yongala. The weather was good though so we had a bite to eat and went straight to sleep. I was so anxious to get to the Yongala I kept waking up every hour and thinking "Can I get up yet?". About 5am I decided I had waited long enough and went up to the deck.

I had a cup of coffee on the back of the boat and as I peered into the dark water I could see the ghostly outlines of MASSIVE GT's (Giant Trevally) in the light of the boat.

Here's a photo from the top deck of the boat looking down into the water to the wreck below. You can make out a couple of GT's and some big Bat Fish.

They really looked like sharks and I asked Luke, the divemaster and Instructor, what they were, just to be sure! It was still dark and as we were talking on the back of the boat we could hear a whale surface and breath and it sounded close! It must have only been 5 metres away and the adrenalin started going! We could just make out the shape as the sun slowly rose through the fog.

There was a rush among everyone on board to get our scuba gear on and get into the water!

There is a danger marker on the wreck of the Yongala which shows its location because it could be a shipping hazard. Underwater, it's about 16m to the top of the wreck and 28-30m to the sandy bottom. Because a lot of people dive this wreck they have installed permanent mooring lines, which means that boats don't have to anchor and run the risk of damaging the wreck. The orange buoy on the right of the photo above is from our boat (the MV Sea-Esta) and that is tied on to a line that runs down to the wreck. This makes it easy to go from the boat, along the line to the buoy and then down the line to the wreck. It also makes a great back scratcher for the Humpback Whales to try and get rid of their barnacles!

Because the wreck is in the middle of nowhere (no reefs around and just open water really) a lot of the larger creatures use it as a cleaning station. They swim in and all the little fish eat the parasites and other things that gather and grow on their skin and scales.

I don't know how Mel always manages to take the best pictures of the whales. Here is one that she took from the boat at the Yongala...

And here is a quick video compilation that I made. Some of the whales and some of me just dropping my phone off the back of the boat and seeing what was under there!

So our first dive at the Yongala wreck was amazing. As we descended the line the wreck appears out of the darkness and there are just so many fish and creatures. We saw lots of big GT's on the way down. Massive schools of fish ... a cobia... a sea snake or two... some more lion fish and then a beautiful sea turtle like the one pictured below...

(not my photo) he was just cruising along the wreck checking things out. Didn't seemed bothered by us at all. As we were looking at the turtle Luke signalled to us and then took off swimming really fast. We quickly followed and then realised what he was in a hurry for. The humpback had come down to swim with us. It was all a bit too much to take in. It was huge, and just turned gracefully over underwater and looked me right in the eye... it was probably only 5 metres away from us all... just amazing.

I don't have a photo and can't even begin to describe how awesome this experience was. Literally breathtaking as I then started to run low on air! So we ascended shortly after...

This photo (not mine) goes a little way to picture what it was like...

This is a photo of a picture of the Yongala which is in the Maritime Museum in Townsville...

And here is an illustration of the wreck as it lies on the bottom... It's 110m long!

The ships bell was recovered and we saw it in the Maritime Museum the next day...

All souls were lost when it went down... 122 people (and a racehorse called "Moonshine" and a champion Bull).

We waited an hour or so before our second dive. In that time the whale had headed off. The second dive was great because we saw a MASSIVE Queensland Groper and did a full tour of the wreck - right up the hull and back down the deck. We also saw a resident Moray Eel and lots of other smaller gropers and a lion fish. Also the Bat fish turn pure white and point upwards when they want the smaller cleaner wrasse to clean them. We saw one doing this... then it changed back to it's normal colour and swam away!

That was it... three nights and three days aboard were over and it was time to make the 6 hour trip back to Townsville. We saw a couple of dolphins on the way back as well just cruising along.