Dark water on the ex-HMAS Adelaide

 Ocean diving, rEvo, Wrecks  No Responses »
Sep 152015
 
Dark water on the ex-HMAS Adelaide

About the wreck The ex-HMAS Adelaide is a sister ship to the ex-HMAS Canberra. Both were deliberately sunk after a useful life of service and now serve as diver attractions. I have dived the Canberra (which sits out of Melbourne) a few times, but I hadn’t visited the Adelaide. She can be found on the NSW Central Coast, just over an hour’s drive north of Sydney. About the dive I was up in NSW to give a talk at Dive Imports on the delights of cave diving around the country. After a great night with an enthusiastic audience we were up early Saturday morning to head out to the wreck. The topside weather was fantastic with bright sunshine. Unfortunately the [read more…]

Currents on the wreck of the Cambridge

 Ocean diving, rEvo, Wrecks  No Responses »
Jun 032015
 
Currents on the wreck of the Cambridge

  About the wreck The SS Cambridge went down in 1940 to a German mine laid by the Passat. She was the first Allied vessel to be lost in Australian waters during WWII. Of the 58 crew on board when the mine exploded, 57 survived and were picked up and taken ashore at Port Welshpool. The wreck sits upright in 67m on a sandy bottom. After Steve’s tales of limitless vis and huge props from a dive back in November, I was looking forward to an awesome dive on her as the highlight of a weekend diving around Wilson’s Prom. About the dive Our original intentions were to hit the wreck at about 9am for the morning slack water. The [read more…]

The camera on the course

 Ocean diving, Reef diving, rEvo  No Responses »
Feb 172015
 
The camera on the course

The careful reader will have noted by now that I take my camera with me on nearly every dive. There are a limited number of exceptions each year, usually where the camera would seriously impede further cave exploration. From a practical perspective this means I can do almost everything I need to do on an average dive with one hand or with the camera propped between my forearms. It also means that anywhere between half and all of my available brainpower is devoted to f-stops and strobe positioning rather than deco, navigation and gas consumption. The key to success is knowing when to forget about art and concentrate on diving. This is a balance I’ve managed well so far. The [read more…]

Rebreathers in the Shaft

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier, rEvo  No Responses »
Feb 102015
 
Rebreathers in the Shaft

The Shaft is a beautiful dive, and an impossible cave to photograph. After I finally achieved that classic shot of the sunbeam down the middle of the hole, rockpile lit up and diver frozen up in the shallows, I declared I never needed to take photographs in there again. And yet, two summers on I was headed over to Gambier with my parents for a fun family weekend with a Shaft booking in place. A couple of weeks beforehand Kelvyn was chatting to the landowners about the long-discussed intent of opening the site up to rebreathers. While there have been “special interest” dives in the Shaft on rebreathers previously regular diving has all been run on open circuit. Letting a [read more…]

Backlit bubbles in Tank Cave

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier, rEvo  No Responses »
Feb 042015
 
Backlit bubbles in Tank Cave

After our very pleasant jaunt through DD31, Moo and I headed over to Tank Cave for the rest of the Australia Day weekend. It was good to see a whole bunch of freshly minted Advanced Cave divers working through their first group dives with enthusiasm. Tim and I left the gold lines to them and headed down the back of the cave. I was on the rEvo but Tim was back on open circuit and carrying a couple of large stages in addition to his sidemounts. The rEvo makes a big difference to photography in Tank, as once I’m in the right spot I can take more than a couple of different angles without worrying about my bubbles disturbing silt [read more…]

MOD3 and 100m on the rEvo

 Ocean diving, Reef diving, rEvo  No Responses »
Jan 132015
 
MOD3 and 100m on the rEvo

Once we had progressed through the skills and drills dives discussed in the last post, it was on to the deeper stuff. This meant many of the same flashcards seen previously with the added pressure of extra depth. Rather than swimming out from shore we also added some very small boats to the fun. The second photo here is me fully geared up in my rEvo as we chugged towards the dive site. On arrival in the right location it was a sideways manoeuvre to get fins on and slip over the side of the boat. The driver then passed in my three stages and we did a floating S drill as a team. It’s the rainy season in Bali at [read more…]

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