Great Barrier Reef

My journal entry for Friday, 18 April starts, "What an awesome, awesome day!" Yes, we went out to the Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with a tour called Passions of Paradise that operates a large sailing catamaran that took us out to Michaelmas Cay and Paradise Reef. http://www.passions.com.au


The outward journey took a little over two hours, and the seas were average, I guess, although we did have two somewhat seasick children on our hands! The crew were great, and one of the women did her best to keep them happy, and we just sat at the back of the boat until they felt a bit better, which they did after a while. Michaelmas Cay is a small coral island on the outer reef, and once the sailboat moored we were able to be ferried on the glass- bottomed boat to the cay with our snorkel gear. The sand was white, but coarser than the sand around Batemans Bay (which consists of minute silica particles) because it is comprised of coarse coral, of course! John was busy scuba diving, so the three of us girls strapped on our snorkel equipment ("they're not flippers, they're fins," said our on-board snorkel instructor, "the last I heard, Flipper was a dolphin." and checked out the reef.

The reef was just beautiful - there was a great diversity of coral, and we saw all sorts of different types of fishes, and Rachel's favourite, the giant clams. After John's scuba adventure (he got to see a sea turtle and feed it a bit of plant that the scuba instructor had picked), Rachel and I went back to the catamaran for our introduction to scuba diving. We had our previous (from the trip to the reef) instructions refreshed, got our gear on and we were off. There was a series of ropes strung at various levels between the pontoons at the back of the catamaran, and we jumped in and held on to the uppermost rope. Two instructors were there with us (there were about eight people trying scuba diving in our group), making sure we knew what we were supposed to do. They helped us go down to the next level of rope, then we had to decide if we wanted to continue with a deeper dive or just stop. I really didn't enjoy is at much as I thought I would, or nearly as much as snorkeling, and I didn't really feel in control. I mean, with snorkeling, if something were to happen, you can just lift your head from the water, but with scuba, you're pretty much stuck with solving the problem under water, and I just wasn't comfortable with that. I am glad I tried, though. I will get John to blog about his scuba experience, because he just loves it! So, once again, until he starts blogging again, you're stuck with my views on things! I think Rachel liked the scuba diving, and she probably would have continued, but I was doing my overprotective mother act, and she'll have to go scuba diving some other time.


We had a great lunch back on the boat, then we sailed another half hour to Paradise Reef where we moored once again. There was no visible land here, just the reef a metre or so below the surface at its shallowest part. We all geared up again and jumped off the back of the boat. The sea was rougher here, with moderate sized swells, and I was wondering how I'd snorkel in it, but it was a lot of fun bobbing around in the water. This reef was better here than at Michaelmas Cay (although that was just great!), and we had almost an hour to snorkel. I saw way more marine life here, not as many giant clams, but lots more variety of fish - we even found Nemo!














We had a two hour trip back to Cairns, Natalie slept for about half the way, and Rachel curled up to rest on one of the two netted deck trampolines at the front of the boat, slung between the two pontoons. That was a great place to spend part of the journey, the weather was better on the way out, so we all hung out there, the way back was colder and windier, but that didn't stop Rachel from enjoying it. All in all, it was just a fantastic day.