Cairns
It feels odd that this blog post is entitled Cairns, given that I managed to get in and out of the city having barely seen any of it, yet it was truly a highlight of my time in Australia. I arrived in the city at almost midnight and snuck in to my hostel room to sleep, only to wake up at 6am to head out for the first of a couple of exciting activities booked. First: skydiving.
I have been once before, but that was only from 7000 feet (around 30 seconds of freefall) so when I found a cheap deal for a dive from 14000 feet I couldn’t resist the opportunity. This time knowing what to expect I was more able to enjoy all the sensations of the dive, but still it all went by very quickly! It felt like around 10 seconds between jumping and the parachute opening, but I was assured by my tandem diver Eunsung it was around 45, just brains get confused when they’re overstimulated. Eunsung was constantly making jokes and very relaxed about everything - not surprising given he trained in the Korean military and only later decided that jumping just for a fun sounded like a more enjoyable way to earn money. Given this was my second jump I asked him if there were any fun tricks we could to while in the air. He told me afterwards he attempted a 720 spin, but only made it about 680 round. I’ll take that. I also got to steer the parachute a little on the way down. The whole experience has inspired me to at some point learn how to jump solo - another expensive new hobby to add to the list. It would be cheaper if I could be excited by chess.
That afternoon I had to visit the dive shop in town to get fitted for equipment, and later went to meet Ailbhe, a friend from home currently living in Cairns, for dinner. It couldn’t be a late night though, as I needed to be up even earlier the next day for the second bit of excitement: 3 days living and scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
I’d previously stayed on a live-aboard diving boat in Thailand, but there was immediately a difference. Where in Thailand the boat stayed out at sea and speedboats took divers each day to and from the boat, here the group left together and stayed together for 3 days out at sea, before returning together. It meant a sense of community was immediately created and we really got to know each other - 32 people living on top of each other with relatively little space forces you to interact! I was lucky to have an excellent group to interact with, and made several friends quickly, notably including my main dive buddy for the trip, Kaya. We would dive together and once back on the boat, sit with charts and books full of pictures of fish working out what we’d seen. With no phone signal we were all taken back to a time when the only way to find something out was to leaf through a book and ask others, and comparing our finds made for excellent evening entertainment.
With 11 dives to complete in 3 days, plus getting to and from the reef (around 2.5 very choppy hours each way) the schedule was intense. There was little downtime, just days full of dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep, repeat. It was physically difficult to get our wetsuits on for the last dives of each day, but it was definitely worth it to see the reef at night, particularly the intimidating looking shark silhouettes, their eyes reflecting green in the torchlight. We saw a few grey reef sharks one night, and the other saw a white tip reef shark - an encounter I’ll remember as it passed within about 10cm of me on its way past! During the day dives there we saw too many exciting things to attempt to list, but some highlights include swimming alongside 4 or 5 hawksbills turtles (some of them significantly bigger than me), giant clams big enough to sit inside (although we didn’t), huge barramundi, bumphead parrotfish, a big barracuda, a few stingrays, a trumpetfish, many triggerfish, and corals packed full of various anemone fish, angelfish, boxfish and so many others.
We headed back to the mainland as a boat full of friends with wonderful shared memories. Sad, but all sorely in need of rest! We met up for dinner and drinks that night before parting ways, hugs all round. Cairns: no idea what it’s like, but I hope I can go back soon.