The End of an Era

   To be quite honest, I'm not really sure where to begin.  Finals have ended, most of my friends have all left for other travels or home, and I leave for the US of A tomorrow morning.  I will never forget what I have done here.  I have gone on over 40 dives to some of the most amazing places, swam with cuttle fish, sharks, and turtles, bungee jumped, 4-wheeled through the jungle and so much more.  I have made friends that hopefully will last a lifetime, and had experiences that I will never top.  But my Australian experience has been so much more than the combination of all the things I did.  I have grown as a person. I am more confident in myself and my abilities, I have mellowed out about the little things, and most importantly, I have realized that there are many ways to live the life we have.  My world has been opened and I can now see just how many opportunities and paths I have to explore and follow.  I am so glad I came out here, and I can not wait to keep on traveling. 

~Cheers, Caitlin Slife

If someone told you to jump off a bridge...

Monday morning came at a ridiculously early hour the day my friend AJ and I decided to go bungee jumping.  We got picked up by the lovely people at AJ Hackett and arrived at a rather secluded spot near the JCU Cairns campus.  After walking up a rather steep hill, we emerged into a lovely bar area open to the air and situated so spectators could gather round the small pool where we to jump against all instincts.  We paid, set our stuff on a chair and climbed the “tower of terror” to the platform where we were to jump.  AJ decided to go first, and since he has a bad knee, he was put in a body harness.  I watched him jump, very excited for my own brush with death as I watched him splash down and swing around.  My turn came around and the awesome guys at the top sat me down to tie me up to the bungee cords.  I was expecting some fancy rigged set up with lots of clips and D-rings, so I was somewhat surprised when they guy folded a towel around my ankles, secured it with a strap, and started hooking up the bungees.

“Wait, that’s it? Just a towel and a strap?”

“Oh no no sweetheart,” I was reassured, “its three towels and a strap!”

“…. Umm”

“Oh don’t worry hun! They’re the best towels 2 dollars can buy!”

This was the point where I began to have a few doubts.

They got me hooked up and I shimmed to the edge of the platform, buzzing from the adrenalin.  I still wasn’t really afraid, just a bit nervous.  The next 30 seconds however, were absolutely terrifying:

:00 sec- get to edge of platform

:01 sec- realize that the extremely high high-dive metaphor I had constructed in my head to keep from   getting nervous was completely wrong and this is actually significantly higher than I was expecting.

:05 sec- Am I really going to do this?

:10 sec- guy starts counting down from 5

:15 sec- guy hits 1

:16 sec- screw it I'm jumping

:17 sec- actually jump off the platform

:18 sec- realize I have made a terrible mistake

:19-25 sec- free fall and release blood curdling scream

:25 sec- bungee starts slowing me down and

:30 sec- start laughing like a crazy person as I continue to bounce and swing back and forth

yeah it was a pretty wild ride.

The next day AJ and I went 4 wheeling through the rainforest.  Pretty self explanatory.  It was a lot of fun and absolutely beautiful. 

Lecture Recess #1 Exploring Cairns and Port Douglas

    Last week lecture recess began. It's basically just spring break, but it means a full week off plus the following Monday, as Monday is the Queen's Birthday (long live the Queen!)  A group of my friends decided that we should go up to Cairns for the break and have some fun, so Friday night at 1 in the morning, we boarded a greyhound for Cairns.  About 5 hours later, sufficiently exhausted from the uncomfortable ride, we arrived and began the search for a MacDonalds at which we could get some coffee. We finally found one and were quickly picked up by the friendly people at JJ's Backpackers where we were staying. 

Cairns is a very touristy place.  Most of the people I met there were German, Swedish, French, Japanese, or Korean.  In fact, I think the number of Australian's that I met there was somewhere in the ballpark of 5.  Because of the city's touristy nature, there is a ton to do and some great bars and clubs.  We met up with some classmates that had come up before us and spent the night on the town, hanging out, drinking, and almost going swimming.  We had no plans until Monday, so we spent next two days exploring Cairns. 

On Saturday we explored the Esplanade, the boardwalk situated on the seawall protecting the city.  

 

Swimming in the ocean here is not recommended.  To prevent erosion, a seawall was put in, effectively getting rid of any possible beach and making it a haven for estuary birds and crocodiles.  To replace the beach, a huge public pool called the lagoon is in the middle of the city, right on the boardwalk. Its beautiful and a lot of fun.  Also, all signs here are in English, German, and what I think is Japanese.

As we explored we found that there was an outdoor market/festival going on.  There were lots of these incredible chalk artworks and little shops that were a lot of fun to explore.

One of my favorite places was the night markets where you can get cheap souvenirs, $15 massages, and fantastic Asian food.  Its a maze of shops all trying to sell tourists some of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen (i.e. giant high-top converse shaped purses) but there was also some really cool stuff and I acquired a little souvenir for my parents (get excited guys).  It was after this that we decided the streets did not have enough music and so provided some of our own.

On Sunday I met up with a friend of a friend who took us to the fun local bars and drove us up to Port Douglas.  Port Douglas is a beautiful little fishing town with a gorgeous beach.

 We walked up to a lookout on a rocky cliff and were greeted with an incredible view of the harbor.

We spent the whole day here before driving back to Cairns.  It was really an incredible time. 


To be continued in the next post...

I came, I saw, I dove

   I have always been skeptical of calling the ocean blue.  I mean look at it. Whether you're at the beach or taking a quick boat ride out from a marina, its always a kind of greenish teal color.  Clearly, I had not been going out far enough.  Last weekend I boarded the Kalinda, a live-aboard diving boat that the JCU dive club had rented out for our trip one of the top ten wrecks in the world, the Yongala, as well as two amazing reefs. We got underway around 9pm on Friday night and were briefed on the safety measures and travel plans and went to sleep.  That morning, we woke up to this:

I have never seen water so blue. It was like floating on liquid sapphires.  We had arrived at the wreck site of the S.S. Yongala, a 109m ship which was sunk in a cyclone off the coast of Townsville in 1911 with all 112 of her passengers and now sits at a depth of 14-30m.  Since then it has become a mecca of aquatic life and is one of the most intact ship wrecks in Australian waters. (go here to learn more)

 

 I was obtaining my Advanced open water certification during this trip, so our first dive down was our introduction to boat diving.  We set up our gear on the deck and struggled into wet suits, strapped in, signed out, and giant stride-ed off the metal platform to our fist dive of the trip.  We were greeted with a strong current that made us burn through our air supplies and gave us little time to enjoy the wreck.  After ascending and waiting for a surface interval of an hour, we got back in to find the current had dropped off, giving us an incredible opportunity to see just what was living on the wreck.  Highly poisonous sea snakes glided gracefully from one point to another.  2 huge bull rays, at least 5ft across flew above us and a grouper the size of a VW beetle sat beneath the bow.  Trigger and bat fish swam through forests of tube worms and fan corals which sprouted from every point along the wreck.  

It was incredible, breathtaking, inspiring, there are no words.  We leveled off at 18m (~60ft) and explored the wreck until we hit 120bar left in our tanks and had to start the journey back. 

(PSA. penetrating wrecks is not only dangerous for untrained divers, its also bad for the wrecks! not only is the Yongala a maritime grave, which is one reason no one should ever enter, but it is very delicate.  Your bubbles get stuck inside her and speed corrosion, and you may disturb marine life.  Archeologist may also be working on the wreck, so don't touch things!)

  

We then set off on the 3 hour boat ride to Little Broadhurst Reef.  

Little Broadhurst reef is a beautiful dive. (unfortunately, my camera crapped out on me for this dive so no pictures.)  Swim throughs, runs between huge coral walls, creating a maze like feeling that makes it a lot of fun to explore.  Our first dive here was a fun dive, with no particular learning objectives.  My dive buddy, Tom, and I took the opportunity to explore the vast, somewhat shallow reef.  We started with a simple plan. go in one side and follow the swim throughs in a rough U shape.  As soon as we descended however, all plans were forgotten.  We saw a large green turtle and a small reef shark cruising the edges of the reef.  Huge soft corals and sea cucumbers dotted the ground and clung to small outcroppings of rock and old coral faces.  Tube worms seemed to grow from every sandy spot and fish darted all around us.  After about half an hour of exploring the maze of corals and corralling fish through the swim throughs, we realized we were starting to get low on air.  It was at this point that we also realized we were incredibly lost.  With no workable compass heading and stuck in the middle of the reef, we mimed at each other until we came to a consensus that one direction seemed better than all the others, crossed our fingers, and swam out of the reef.  It was a great relief to both of us when we reached the surface and saw we had come up on the correct side of the corals. 

Little Broadhurst is also where we completed our night dive for our advanced qualification.  After dinner, we suited up and jumped into a world lit by moonlight and phosphorescence.  Every stir of the water kicked up bioluminescent bacteria that shined green and then disappeared.  It was like watching a kid with a sparkler, each movement outlined and left with an after image.  We swam back to the reef, shining our lights across the bottom in an attempt to spot anything unique to the night scene of a reef.  The first creature of the night was a small octopus moving from one coral island to another.  It was quickly followed by an epaulette shark (which looks like this) and some iridescent lobsters clinging to the reef, their eyes shining in the light from our torches.  The real star of the night however was a sleeping parrot fish.  Parrotfish are interesting because at night they excrete a protective mucus cocoon to prevent parasites from feeding on them  (for more information on Parrotfish cocoons, go here).  It was fascinating how much a landscape could change simply by turning off the lights.

We went to sleep that evening, exhausted, but excited for the next day, when we would be diving Wheeler Reef.  A deeper reef that was absolutely beautiful. 

30m of visibility made our advanced qualification deep dive the most incredible dive I have ever experienced.  It was like swimming though an aquarium.  We descended to 26m (86ft), the point where red looks like a muddy brown and orange, a mustard yellow, and settled on a field of white sand.  We were greeted by a little spotted ray, did a bit of practice with our dive computers, and proceeded to explore.  We saw a whole school of extremely rare humphead (or bumphead) parrotfish (go here to learn more about this incredible species of fish!).  Huge colorful hard corals extended above and around us. My favorite part however, was when we found a wrasse cleaning station.  Wrasse are small parasite eating fish which set up places on reefs where other fish can come to be cleaned. It was so exciting, I must have sat there for 5min just watching these little fish fly all over two bigger ones who just hung above the reef, like two women in a beauty salon.  (go here to learn more).

I had so much fun on the first dive, I couldn't wait the full hour surface interval to get back in the water and went for a short snorkel adventure with a few friends.

 

Our second dive here was significantly less exciting.  Met with an incredibly strong current, we attempted to complete the navigation portion of our advanced certification.  Swimming a box has never been more difficult.  The current also killed the visibility, cutting it in half.  We quickly burned through our tanks, and called for a pick up, too tired to swim the 100m back to the boat against the current.  We shed our gear and suits and said goodby to the reefs, settling down for the 7 hour trip back to Townsville.  If that wasn't exciting enough however, we got to see a baby blue whale just before pulling into port.  I poked its nose out of the water several times, swimming toward and away from us for the better part of an hour.  It was the best possible ending to the most incredible trip i have ever been on.

thanks to 

http://www.cs.miami.edu/~geoff/Personal/Diving/Briefings/Yongala.html

 for info and diagram of the Yongala

http://www.wannadive.net
and
http://www.superyachtsqueensland.com/cruising-destinations/the-great-barrier-reef/townsville/wheeler-reef-dive-site/
for maps

and Maddie Roth
for pictures of Wheeler Reef