Brisbane and North Stradbroke Island, January 2001

We finally arrived in Brisbane after our delayed train and bus journey and made our way to Palace Backpackers. They'd lost our reservation and weren't remotely apologetic about it either. Fortunately, we got the last double room available.

The next morning my girlfriend flew home and I headed off to North Stradbroke island. There are loads of islands in Moreton Bay and North Stradbroke is the biggest. It's accessible via a ferry. I'd booked a backpacker's room at the Straddie Guesthouse. They have a minibus that picks you up at your accommodation, goes on the ferry and then goes onto the hostel/guesthouse.

The accommodation is located at Point Lookout and there's not much else there. There are several camping grounds, a Masonic club and a bowling club. There's also a pub, but it's quite a walk and it's also at the top of a rather steep headland. The food was OK at the pub. As a non-resident, I was also allowed in the two clubs. The Masonic club did nice Chinese food and they only charged $1.85 for a pot (1/2 pint) of beer.

The dive centre used RIBs for the diving. We would load the boat up and walk down to the beach. Once on the beach and off the public highway, we all got on the boat and drove down to find a suitable spot to launch through the fairly lumpy surf.

The plan was to dive Manta Bommie, but when we headed out there, it was quite rough. I thought it was still diveable, but we also had a family of snorkellers onboard, and it was too rough for them. So we headed to another site called Shag Rock.

The barnacle covered rocks were home to quite a few fish. There seemed to be an awful lot of porcupine fish, more than you'd usually expect. During the two dives I also saw some shovel nosed rays, my first ever flying gurney, some shovel nosed rays, a couple of turtles, loads of wobbegongs and some shoals of fish. The depth of the site was just over 13m and the viz was about 20m.

The dives were quite good, though not as good as the previous week in Byron. The rocks are in a marine park, but only commercial trawling is banned. Spearfishing is allowed, though not with scuba equipment, and I think that was the reason why there were so many porcupine fish and few other species. The dive school are campaigning to have fishing banned. If they're successful, I think it would be a much better dive site.

The next day we headed out to Manta Bommie. It was almost as rough as the day before, so I wasn't hopeful. To my delight, they decided we could do it. The two snorkellers looked less happy in a green sort of way. I was diving with this guy who apparently used to be an instructor but now dives only a couple of times a year. As I watched his octopus and depth gauge drag through the sand, I did find myself wondering whether he used to teach with that kit.

Anyway, we went down the line to a depth of about 10m and there, sitting on the bottom, was a leopard shark. About 15m in one direction was another and then there was also one on my left. As we started swimming about, they seemed to be everywhere. We came across a sand gulley and there were another three of them plus a couple of shovel nosed rays well over a metre long.

There were also three different kinds of stingrays buzzing about from large, black bullrays, do to the little blue spotted lagoon rays. There were also quite a lot of fish, an octopus and then a spotted eagle ray swam past, but no manta rays. I was starting to think I was going to be unlucky.

My buddy then started to get very excited about a pillow star. Fat starfish have never impressed me much, so I gazed around into the blue whilst he inspected it. Then in the distance, I could see something black and white and big. Very big. It was a manta. We swam over and hung around for about 5 mins watching it. It swam in a couple of circles around us and then swam over my head, almost within touching distance, but it lost interest in us and flapped off.

Getting back on the RIB was a bit of a trial and not helped by the fact that the crew weren't very familiar with a harness and wings setup.

Then we went to Shag Rock for the second dive. I geared up and did a backward roll and was quite surprised to sink almost immediately. So I sank to the bottom in about 11m and tried my inflator. It was working but my buoyancy wasn't changing. I took it off and tried it. Everytime I pressed the inflator, there was a stream of bubbles coming out of the top of the wing.

It didn't look fixable underwater, so I aborted the dive and went up the anchor line. Swimming up was quite easy. Getting back in was much easier because this site was protected. Unzipping the outer bag of the wing, I found that the corrugated hose had been pulled out of the hole where it was connected to the wing. It must have happened whilst my kit was pulled back in the boat on the previous dive. I wasn't that disappointed though. After 364 dives, I'd finally got to see my first manta ray.

The next morning I headed back to Brisbane on the minibus. Palace backpackers didn't lose my booking this time. The city was much more humid than it had been on Straddie. It was about 30ºC, but it felt much hotter. The bar under the backpackers had good air-conditioning and cold beer served in pint glasses, so I retreated there for the evening.

The next day I headed out to the airport to catch a plane to Perth.

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