Diver Down

Location: Australia
Date: April 28, 2000

OK. Great to hear from everyone that has taken the time to let us know what's going on. This update is brought to you by Mike who usually sits behind Linda. For some reason Linda can't sit and watch me "hunt and peck" at the keyboard. I should have paid attention in typing class in high school. Somehow I still got an A. Anyway, Linda and just celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary (4/24) by going on a 5 star dive trip to the Outer Great Barrier Reef.

Before I start I have to say congrats to Scott and Amy Dohemann on the arrival of Mr. Nicholas Scott Dohemann on April 24th. Nicholas picked the best day to come out and say hi!

Before we took off on out trip we had a few days to burn and didn't want to spend it in the "Spring Break" atmosphere of Airlie Beach. The weather was perfect for a trip to Hook Island (part of the Whitsunday Islands). We camped on the beach of great of the Hook Island Resort and snorkeled in clear blue waters. We virtually had the entire place to ourselves. Great to see the sun come up over the ocean in the morning and then watch the full moon rise at night.

If anyone is ever in Australia during Easter Weekend, make sure you do all of your business before Good Friday. We wanted to by some wine for our trip for the weekend and found out he hard way that the entire country closes up (even the drive thru liquor stores) for Good Friday. This incredibly "religious" country also requires you to buy food if you want to purchase alcohol. Go figure!

That aside we boarded our dive boat(the OCEANIA), met the crew and the rest of the passengers, and got our safety brief. Most of the other passengers had heaps of diving experience, so we felt like total rookies. I won't go into too much detail about this trip but the diving was excellent! The GBR is a world heritage site and is protected. I would hate to see what would happen if a ship ever spilled oil here. It would be a total disaster.

After Linda and I worked out our underwater communications problems (we really put underwater arguing on the map) all the dives went smoothly. The amount of sea life on Alexandria and Fairey Reefs just blew us away. So many beautiful corals and fishes. I can only imagine how this place was 30 years ago before the boatloads of divers arrived. We did 10 dives which 2 of them were at night. Saw some really big fish like Mauri Wrasse, trevally, bumphead parrotfish, a few whitetip reef sharks and Humphrey the loggerhead turtle. We were unable to do the SS YONGALA wreck dive due to high winds. Bummer! That leads me to the ride back to Airlie Beach on our Anniversary. We had to pull up the anchor and head in for the protection of the Islands because of the bad weather. Of course we started to head back right after we ate breakfast and you know what that means: with 2 meter swells and 20-30 knot winds, a LOT of people lost their breakfasts over the side, including Linda. Of course I had to help her out through all of this. Came close to spewing a few times myself. What a way to spend an anniversary!

So now it's off to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree NP before we head off to Malaysia. Only 2 weeks left in Oz. Keep the updates coming. Love,

Mike and Linda

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