All this happened last year when I was on exchange at a university in Sydney. I had joined the Underwater Club at the university and the whole session I had heard endless stories about their trips out to the Great Barrier Reef. Knowing that the water in Sydney was freezing (well... 15C) and I was fed up with my thesis work I quickly signed up. A few weeks later Lyndal, Rachael and Stephanie picked me up and we embarked upon a three day drive up to the Reef. The drive itself was loads of fun (though I almost managed to get busted for reckless driving, if this is possible with a diesel Nissan Patrol, in central Brisbane). When we got to Gladstone we had two busy days packing the big charter boat with everything needed to keep 20 people healthy and happy for two weeks - water, food, tents, hammocks, beer (lots), a compressor, two boats, petrol, spearguns, tequila, diving gear, a radio etc etc
On Saturday, July 8th, we finally left the mainland behind. It is a six hour boatride out to Northwest Island but I was so busy admiring the dolphins in the bow wave and looking for jumping rays I hardly noticed time passing. In late afternoon the boat let the anchor go off the reef edge and we started unloading. Pretty stiff work considering everything had to be ferried across the reef flat to the shore and then dragged way up into the bush. More than a dozen big barrels of water and petrol, 20 scuba tanks, a heavy compressor and loads and loads of food weighs a lot ... unfortunately the girls on the trip knew fully how to exploit male pride to get away from most of the heavy carrying themselves. When everything finally was set up and covered for the approaching rain it was dark and I just crashed into my sleeping bag.
( Here is a picture of NW Island viewed from the sea. If you look closely you'll see how the water looks brighter up on the shallows.)
At sunrise the next day it didn't exactly seem as if we had arrived at paradise, there had been a steady drizzle all night and everything was soaked. It wasn't cold but when it's less than 20C and wet it doesn't quite feel the way you expect on a tropical island. But since we were really keen to go diving we quickly jumped into wetsuits and got the little tinny (called Smiley , because of the jaws painted on his stern) out. After getting into the water I was slightly dissappointed at first, the viz wasn't what it should be and the coral looked pretty barren. But then things started happening, we saw some huge rays and turtles and all of the sudden the rain was all forgotten.
In the afternoon we did a shore dive near the channel marker and at the time I thought it was a great dive. The rest of the day was spent exploring the island and settling in at the camp. In the evening the three californian exchange students did one of their few communal efforts during the trip, they cooked a mexican dinner that was really nice. After dinner we were sitting talking when all of a sudden one of the more experienced reeftrippers in the group, Tony, who'd been playing with a kitchen knife suddenly stabs at something near his chair. Proudly he then holds up a dead mouse ... They'd been running around the camp in legions and although some people were annoyed with them we still got a bit shocked at this. Tony then explained that the mice were not indiginous to the island, they come with the campers and live on their food. The problem is that when the campers go back to the mainland and the mice begin to starve they attack the local birds and eat their eggs. Some still thought that killing them was a bit drastic. This attitude changed after a week or so when people started getting fed up with sharing everything with these furry small creatures - food, tents, sleeping bags. One morning I woke up and found a dead and very flat mouse in my sleeping bag, an unusual experience ... They had the most uncanny knack at getting into strange places, I still can't believe some of the places I found mice shit.
When we arrived at the island we'd been greeted by a person who looked just like your archetypal aussie, a guy in his mid twenties, deeply tanned, fit, with long unruly hair and a constantly busy mouth. He was wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth and this assured me that this was a person who is central to the UNSW Underwater club's mythology - Plukky the spearo . He'd joined many trips to NW Island and supplied the camp with fresh fish and lobsters in return for them listening to endless stories about gigantic fish caught and even bigger sharks narrowly escaped. This guy was going to change my life, he was on the island on all the three reeftrips I did and during these two months he taught me more about the ocean than anyone else have done and best of all - he introduced me to spearfishing. I had brought a small gun to the island and he showed how to set it up and what fish to go for. To start with it was quite hard to get close to the nice fish. A big problem was that my gun was hardly more than a toy and in order to kill a fish you needed to be pretty close. In the beginning I didn't quite realise this but after having maimed a couple of fish (which felt really bad) I quickly became very restrictive and didn't shoot until they were at point blank range.
The first week I really enjoyed scuba diving, the Barrier Reef is teeming with life and seeing the huge turtles, the eels peeking out of their crevices, the occasional shark, big rays and other stuff was fantastic. (Here is an illustrated description of the animals of NW Island .) After about a week though I had started to get less enthusiastic, by then I had seen most of what there was to see and started getting bored with just looking at stuff and slowly swimming around. Instead I spent more and more time without my tanks but with my speargun. Even though I rarely found nice fish I could shoot with that small gun I still had heaps fun. I would be swimming up and down the reef for hours, just looking at the big fish, watching the sharks cruising along the reef, chatting to the eagle rays and just feeling like I was part of that fantastic life. To my surprise I learnt that I saw a lot more of the larger animals while freediving that I did on scuba. Mostly because I spent more time in the water when freediving, partly because you look down on the bottom most of the time when scuba diving but also because some fish get scared by the bubbles from a scuba diver. The other great thing about not carrying around the tanks was that I was getting much less restricted in the water, I could play with the turtles and rays much easier than before.
There were lots of bream around the island and since they're very docile animals I usually managed to take a few of these. I thought they tasted nice and loved eating fish for lunch and dinner every day but after a while it got a bit boring hunting them, there simply wasn't much of a challenge in it. Also Plukky had started calling me the "slate bream man" and I wasn't very happy about that. Apart from the occasional coral trout my first chance at more interesting prey came the day after tequila night (see below) when most people were feeling pretty washed out. Then we managed to get the other guys to let us use the big boat for spearing only and we did the best of it. ( Here is a pic of the boat at SW Rocks, NSW.) At first we didn't have much luck but then we drove down to Fishtail (see this map ) and that was Bonanza ! I was the first in the water and I was amazed to find myself surrounded by spotted Trevally, they were everywhere ! I could see neither the bottom nor the boat, the fish completely blocked my vision. To my surprise I found that it wasn't so easy to shoot them though. You just can't focus on any one individual. My first shot hit a fish near the tail and he easily shook my spear out. The next shot missed completely and miraculously found a path through the school without any fish. By now Plukky had managed to get into the water as well but he only had time for one shot before the whole school quickly swam away. But after having swum up the reef for just five minutes we then found the next gold mine - hundreds and hundreds of drummers. I had the greatest fun hunting these. They were basically too large for my gun but with a bit of cunning it was possible to take them. All I had to do was finding a rock they had to get past. Then I positioned myself behind the rock and waited until they came around the corner. This way I shot three of them in 20 min but then they disappeared. It took me a few minutes to figure out that they hadn't really disappeared, they were just hiding in caves and crevices under the coral. This was no big problem though, it was even easier to ambush them there. Problem was getting them and yourself out of the caves ... One of them fighted so madly that he managed to get me entangled in the shooting line and the line entangled in the coral. I has a pretty nervous half a minute before I managed to break free and swim to the surface for air. I was really glad I didn't shoot that guy at the end of my ability to hold my breath ! When I got back to the boat I found that me, Plukky and Lana had taken enough between us to feed the 20 people on the island all they could eat and we decided to stop hunting. After a little more freediving we headed back to camp. There were some bad feelings about us having been away for a whole six hours but I think we were partly forgiven in the evening when everyone got as much fish as they could possibly eat. A welcome change for most after a week of mostly vegetarian food. Here is a picture of me showing off my catch.
I mentioned "Tequila Night" before, that's a much loved old tradition in the club. The basic idea is just that, we sit together one night and drink tequila... What makes the whole thing more interesting is that you lick the salt off - not your hand - but off someone else's body. You can decide yourself whom you want to lick but then the group decides where. Usually it's not very nasty to start with but as people get more drunk and as the more softhearted people retire the game can get quite interesting ... You can view a sample (by no means the worst) here . There is another traditional night on every reef trip called cocktail night and even though it's heaps fun, everyone getting drunk, dancing under the stars, throwing your friends in the water, it's not quite as spectacular as tequila night.
Apart from diving there really isn't very much to do on the island. As long as there's gas enough you can go scurfing behind the boats (standing on a surfboard while being towed like a waterskier) and that's heaps fun but not many people can do it at any one time. Apart from that you just lounge around on the beach, read , talk, eat, do massages (a great thing to do or get on a sunny beach) or drink beer. It's actually an extremely nice way to spend a few weeks.
This is how Rachael and Nikki (our marine biologist) chose to spend their time. We were lucky in having Katie and Sue with us, their store of skits and songs was quite impressive.
Many people (including me) had been a bit concerned about the lack of fresh water for washing prior to the trip. This turned out not to be a real problem though, since you spend hours and hours in the water every day you never get real "grotty" since the dirt has time to dissolve in the water. You have to get used to having salt all over your skin all the time though. Personally I don't have a problem with this but some people got a bit sick of it after a while. And sure, if you've got long hair then it's going to become pretty messy before the end of two weeks, no problem for me though. One thing I'm really glad about was that I could provide myself with fresh fish and lobster every day, the food we'd brought with us had become quite bland after a week or so when the bread was almost all mould, the fruit and veggies were all rotten and the nice canned food had gone. Another effect of not having fresh water and having to do dishes in salt water is that after a few days all your cutlery is covered with a film of grease that gives your food a curious touch.
One thing about the island that can cause the unwise major trouble is that at certain times the tide can come very high up on the beach, right up to the trees. We had the bad luck of getting a gale the night the spring tide set in. This caused BIG waves on the reefflat and the anchor to the Tinny started dragging along the bottom. Tony saw it just before it hit the shore and managed to get us all down to the beach in time to stop it from being totally wrecked. With twenty people hanging on to the sides we just managed to hold the stern into the waves so two people could bail out all the water and eventually gain control over the boat. What made this especially scary was that at spring tide all the dead trees lying on the beach are taken by the waves and as we were standing there in the dark trying to hold the boat logs would constantly hit us on the legs and feet, some people got hit quite bad.
All good things have to come to an end and after two weeks it was time for us to head back to Gladstone. On the boat back to the mainland I was feeling very empty, it felt as if I was leaving the place where I belonged. That's when I made up my mind where I was going to spend December and January. Having said this I can't deny that some things were pretty nice about returning to civilisation. Eating decent food; meat, fresh bread, yoghurt and fruit is quite nice when you've been without it for weeks. Another thing that was real nice was that you were finally able to clean out all the cuts in your feet. The thing is that on the island you walk barefoot all the time (wearing shoes is very uncomfortable on sand!) and that means that the numerous cuts you get from the coral are always full of sand and dirt. And yes, they do get nasty after a while.
On the way back to Sydney everyone was a bit sad about having left the Reef but we still managed to have a bit of fun a couple of times. When we passed through Byron Bay there was a nice surf up and we took the opportunity to play around a bit. This was a Monday morning in late July and we had the humongous beach to ourselves. Here is a picture of Lyndal and Rachael taken on that beach. The next day we were back in Sydney and I started waiting for December ...
