Airlie Beach, October 1997

After Cairns the next stop on the trail was Airlie Beach. It takes about 12 hours by bus to get there. If I had had more time, I would have stopped in Townsville and gone across to Magnetic Island, but I had to miss them out this time. I actually did my original PADI open water course in Airlie Beach with a company called Oceania Dive. This time I decided to book a 3 day, 3 night trip with a company called Pro Dive Whitsunday for no other reason than they went out on a Thursday. Oceania only went out on Tuesdays and Fridays and Friday was a bit too later for me. There are about six different dive shops in Airlie Beach, though Dive Pro and Oceania Dive are the two that advertise most heavily. One of the shops does trips to the SS Yongala, a famous wreck site, that I would probably have considered if I'd know about it before I arrived.

The cost of the 3 day liveaboard trip was $395. They rather grudging gave a $10 discount for having my own regs and computer, which was the worst percentage reduction that I received from any of the four dive shops I used in Australia. The price also didn't include the reef tax ($10) or the price of the torch batteries and cyalume sticks for the night diving, another $10. In the shop I tried on a wetsuit, fins and BCD and to get the correct sizes.

Again I booked the trip through the hostel I was staying at. I stayed at Backpackers by the Bay, which is about a 5 minute walk from town. This is a definite advantage because Airlie isn't the quietest place of a night but the hostel is far enough away for this not to be a problem. They had a minibus that met every bus into town, so you never had to do the walk carrying luggage anyway. The hostel had a reasonable pool and every night they had a "social hour" when a can of beer cost $1.50. This was good because it made it very easy to get to know other people there.

Pro Dive earned the dubious distinction of being the only tour or trip that I booked on my entire holiday that didn't pick me up from my accommodation. Instead I had to got down at 5pm for a briefing and then return at 7pm to leave for the boat. Not exactly convenient. The briefing didn't really give any more details than was already in the leaflet I'd been given in the shop. We were warned that Queensland had strict laws and that it was a legal requirement to do a 3 minute safety stop on every dive and that we had to return to the boat with 50 bar remaining. Neither of these seemed a particularly big deal to me.

Returning at 7pm we got a bus to the harbour and boarded the boat. It was a large catamaran, spacious inside with reasonable size bunk beds in the cabins. There were over 25 divers on board. The numbers were swelled more than usual by the presence of an instructor from another school, Kelly Dive, and his students. Apparently, Kelly Dive were having problems with their boat. Our kit had been prepared in bins and we checked that they fitted. Despite having already done this at the shop, both my wetsuit and BCD were the wrong size.

While they were fetching the correct size kit, the DM gave us a talk about the diving. The first bombshell was that our first dive was to be no deeper than 18m for 40 mins, the next one to 16m for 40 mins and the third of the day to 14m for 40 mins. I was extremely annoyed as no-one had mentioned what I consider extreme restrictions until after I'd paid over $400 and it was too late. I asked why I wasn't allowed to use my computer and because I didn't have a buddy with one, they said there was nothing they could do. In fact about half of their regulator sets did have computers. Even if I had had a buddy with their own computer, I don't think I would have had much more joy. They insisted on sticking to the PADI RDP and worked out everyone's pressure group for them after every dive. They didn't trust anyone to plan their own dive profile. Even with a square profile you can spend a fair bit longer at 18m than 40 mins anyway.

The first dive of the day was on Fairey Reef. We had to do a checkout dive with an instructor as the first dive, though we didn't have to practise any skills. There were some small fish about and a lot of staghorn coral, but there was also lots of coral rubble. It was quite a shallow dive, averaging about 13m, until we got towards the end, when the bottom dropped away and the coral got better. We had about 2 mins on the better section before we had to start back because we were getting close to our maximum dive time, a paltry 40 mins. Visibility was adequate at around the 15m mark.

The next two dives were also on Fairey Reef and were a bit better. The coral was pretty and I did see some big emperor fish, stingrays, whitetip reef sharks, grey reef sharks and a Queensland grouper. The grouper was only a baby, so it was only half the size of a car!

That night we did a dive around a place called Henry's Bommie. The torches weren't very bright at all. They weren't rechargeable, and at the end of the trip they threw all the batteries away. As they had only been used for two 40 mins night dives, this did seem very wasteful, not to mention extremely environmentally unfriendly. I saw various grouper out hunting on the dive, a shrimp whose eyes lit up in my weak torch beam and a large turtle.

The next day we went to a place called Joe's Corner. The coral was again quite damaged, probably by the cyclone they had had there recently. I saw a turtle and two large parrotfish fighting. Unusually, they weren't just posturing, but were really trying to bite one another. I struggled to find somewhere as deeper than 16m so that we wouldn't be even more restricted on out maximum depth for the next dive.

The next dive site was Seagull Reef and was a drift dive along a wall that goes down to about 50m. It made a good dive because all the coral polyps were out and feeding in the current. There was also a shark swimming around in the shallows at the top of the reef. The visibility was slightly better than normal at around the 20m range.

The next dive was Net Reef. Again this was a wall, though we were of course restricted to the very top of it, as our maximum depth was 14m. Towards the end it was mostly coral rubble, so it's worth spending most of your time hanging when you can get out of the current. I certainly would have done so if any of this had been mentioned in the dive brief, but about all we were told was what direction to go in.

That night we did another night dive. Obviously my complaining had paid off a bit, as eight of us were taken in the small boat to do a dive at a better site. It was part of Bait Reef and consisted of four coral bommies. Unfortunately, I was the only person who didn't see the bull ray but I did see three turtles. The second one was almost as big as a human and the third one frightened the life out of me. I was swimming amongst two bommies, my buddy behind me, when a large object about a metre long cruised past my right shoulder and then into the light beam. I was very relieved to see it was a turtle. After all, there aren't many things that size that you really want to encounter underwater at night.

Halfway though the second day, my buddy had blown a hose on his contents gauge. The replacement set of regs he was given came with a computer. So I decided that I wouldn't pay too much attention to the depth restrictions on the third day. We were only doing two dives, so I reasoned the worst they could do was stop me doing the second dive.

The first dive was again on Bait Reef. This section was another coral wall that we drifted along spotting buffalo wrasse and a large Napolean. I did the dive as a multilevel profile on my computer. It was actually very conservative, because my no-deco time never dropped much below 30 mins, but of course I was well off of the tables when we surfaced after the 40 mins maximum bottom time.

They did let me do the second dive of the day, though they acted as if they were doing me a huge favour. We did the other end of the same wall, which became almost sheer towards the end. Clouds of tropicals were out feeding in the current, as well unicornfish and another Napolean wrasse. Fortunately the visibility was around 20m as, with a maximum depth of 14m, we wouldn't have seen any of the big fish otherwise.

On the last day, the instructor from Kelly Dive handed out a comments sheet to all of his students. Pro Dive did not, which I think speaks volumes.

I personally would not go out with Pro Dive again. It is incredibly frustrating to dive on coral walls with both your maximum depth and your bottom time severely restricted. Whilst some recently qualified people might be happy with their set-up, I suspect that anyone who had done more than about 20 dives would be unhappy. Given that the trip is advertised for "certified divers" I really can't see why I had to stick to 18m when I am certified to and experienced in going over twice as deep as that. Wall dives particularly lend themselves to multi level profiles but we were never given any opportunity to do that with a computer or even, as a last resort, the wheel. Having dived in various places throughout the world, these were the worst restrictions I have ever experienced. Previously, I've only ever been restricted to 30m, something I can easily live with.

Some of the sites were good especially on the second and third days, when there was frequently a current. The sites on the first day weren't as good and I suspect that the presence of OW students, who were still doing their training, restricted the places we could go. I'd certainly consider diving that part of the Great Barrier Reef again. It was certainly an awful lot better and healthier than Briggs Reef off of Cairns. I would choose a different dive operator next time though and I'd ask a lot more questions before I handed over my money about exactly what I would and would not be allowed to do.

The dive briefs we were given weren't very good, though better than nothing.. They usually consisted of a reminder on the draconian depth and time limitations and which shoulder should face the reef.

After the dive trip, I spent a couple of days in Airlie Beach. Despite its name it isn't blessed with the greatest beach in the world. It looks OK when the tide is in, but when it goes out there are vast expanses of mud everywhere. Still, I suppose it makes the British feel quite at home, though the mangrove trees are bit more exotic than you get at Bognor.

The thing that Airlie Beach is best known for is its proximity to the Whitsundays. These are a group of islands, numbering something like 70, which lay just off the coast. They're actually a submerged mountain range and most of them have their own fringing coral reef and white sand beaches. Some of them are national parks, whilst others have resorts on them, some of which are very exclusive and expensive. There are plenty of yacht cruises around the islands and some of the cheaper dive packages include dives on the fringing reefs of islands such as Hook Island.

Like Cairns, Airlie Beach is a major stopover on the backpacker circuit. So there are plenty of bars, and the usual meal deals and happy hours. Other than that, there's a couple of somewhat overpriced supermarkets and lot of souvenir shops that sell mostly T-shirts. There's some info on the Whitsunday website.

By this time of the holiday, I was short on time, so I went straight from Airlie to Brisbane and then flew home. In fact, I did the 14 hour bus ride the night before my flight, which was, perhaps, not the most sensible decision in the world. It did mean that I didn't have time to go to Fraser Island, which was a shame. It's a large sand island, covered in fresh water lakes, which you can tour in a self-drive 4WD. Various places hire both the vehicles and camping equipment. Some of the lakes are very clear, so if you can manage to organise kit hire, it might well we worth having a dive in one of them. A friend of mine has seen people diving in Lake Mackenzie there.

2002 Update

Things have changed since this trip to Airlie Beach. The shop that I dived with have changed their name to Reef Dive. And just to confuse the issue, Oceania Dive have bought the rights to use the Pro Dive Whitsunday name. So I booked a trip on the new Pro Dive Whitsunday boat. As you can see from my report, things weren't much better.

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