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Disclaimer: all photos on this page have been cut to 10% for the web and my camera and camera-work can in no way do justice to a place which, to use a much devalued word in it's truest sense, can justifiably be called AWESOME (please disregard all frequent and annoying previous or future misuses of this word).
Had a good no worries flight to Cairns and transferred to 'The Mantra' at Port Douglas, it is a very pleasant hotel with at least 3 pools, but a little difficult to navigate at first due to the unusual construction. Ate at 'Rattle and Hum' where you get a beeper that sounds when your food is ready. Walked around town today (Friday) and went down to the Marina to book a couple of trips to the reef.
Welcome to Northern Queensland. Obviously, slipping on the rocks is my |
You can see the outline of the stinger net where it is 'safe to swim', I'm not sure that it would keep out those, you know..., those big..., them big cro... You walk past a lifesize picture of the biggest croc caught near here, at the airport. It's quite a long walk. I'm sure it's going to be safer on the reef. |
That's more like it. The only protection needed are the parasols to protect bathers drinking at the pool bar.
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The Hotel Portsea Mantra
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The Aussie airlines do seem to delight in trying to unnerve you. As well as the croc picture, there's a picture of a Great White on all of the baggage carts that says 'One of these weighs 22 suitcases', I kept thinking 'we're going to need a bigger trolley'. Also, as we were taxiing down the runway the in-flight TV cut to an advert about 'sudden accident funeral plans', when I changed channels there was an interesting program about recovering the wreckage of a crashed aeroplane. It was definitely not my week to quit sniffing glue. On the other hand they play things down in the hotel. The receptionist said that it's best to keep to the netted area, because you don't want a 'troublesome sting'. The sting of a box-jelly isn't that troublesome, on account of the fact that relief in the form of death intervenes quite rapidly. The word 'troublesome' obviously has a different meaning in Australia compared to it's interpretation in the rest of the English speaking world. The 'Troublesome Brown' is the second most venemous snake in the world (the aussies also have numero uno, the Taipan), see also the 'Highly Irritating White Shark' and the 'Obstreperous Saltwater Crocodile'.
Well this is the one we came to see and it does not disappoint.On Sunday I went on my own with a boat called 'Silversonic' to do three scuba dives in different parts of the Agincourt ribbon Reef 22m, 14m and about 12m and on Monday we both took the 'Quicksilver' to their fixed platform on a similar part of the outer reef where you can scuba, snorkel go in the submersible, or view from windows below the water-line.There is also fish feeding at noon which brings some quite big fellas close to the platform. I shot so many pics and movie that I'm surprised that I managed to see anything (I'm thinking of going back without the camera). I will put a few pics here and a couple of small movies that have suffered from me crushing them down to .WMV because of the upload limits in the hotel.
Silversonic |
Quicksilver |
A Bass |
A Bass and some Scissortail sergeant fish |
A big fella, must find out what it is |
The Reef |
A Moorish idol (little stripy fella) |
A Parrot Fish |
Another Parrot Fish |
You never get fed-up with Parrot Fish |
A Shoal of unidentified fish |
Turtle |
Female Parrot and possibly a couple of Golden Damsels |
Trumpet fish maybe cleaning or just annoying a Damsel |
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10 th of Feb and penultimate day at this wonderful place. Headed back to dive on the reef with Silversonic got 3 dives of 20m, 14m and 18m viz perfect, fish were spectacular. This was the day you dream about when considering diving the reef. You will have to take my word for most of that, because although I took the camera, decided not to spend all the dives behind the lens and missing actually seein anything. Also, even though the colours are still pretty startling to the eye at depth, my camera doesn't tend to do justice to what you can see. Wow.
Not on my ID sheet, a black spotted sort of yellowy fish |
A very decent size white-tip reef shark, resting on the bottom. |
There is absolutely no end to new stuff you can see, poor photo, but this is a huge water-spout about a km away, don't know what happens if one hits you. |
We caught up with Quicksilver on the way back. for big cats these things can seriously shift. We won. |
Dive Profiles (last 3 dives):
| Pavona.pdf | Just Magic.pdf | Barracuda Bommie |
