So, what do pirates, tigers, South West Rocks and Dive 2000 have in common?  Well, read on!

Welcome to South West Rocks

The October long weekend saw a group of nine divers head North, up to South West Rocks.  Seven years ago, when Muhunthan first visited SWR on the coast, whose name derives from a handful of large boulders by the beach that were once used as a navigational aid, it was a sleepy little hamlet, eight to nine hours from Sydney.  A sleepy hamlet, it is no longer.  And now only just over five hours from Sydney, its popularity is bound to grow.

But why one earth would anyone want to drive that far to dive?  The main reason is a cave (more a glorified tunnel), called Fish Rock Cave and its resident grey nurse sharks.  SWR is one of the natural habitats for the endangered grey nurses, which the State Government is proposing to protect by charging the divers who first identified their plight instead of simply preventing fishing around habitat areas.

The Diving

Politics aside, though, the long weekend offered up the best conditions we could have asked for.  Typically, it is the area around Fish Rock Cave that is most spectacular.  Places like the Aquarium (well named) and Fish & Chips (known for its big and little fish life) can be hot, and everyone finds the cave a blast!

We did the cave on the first and second mornings that we were up there.  The cave lived up to most expectations - at both the deep and shallow entrances, there were curtains of roughies that divers had to part to enter or exit the cave.  "Curtains" is such an apt description - there was so much life around the entrances.  Within the cave were wobbegong sharks, cods, crayfish and heaps of other stuff.  The grey nurses, which can often be found in the cave, were out in the shallow entrance, but there were only a handful of them.  Still, Phil (who was experiencing the cave for the first time) had a ball going all the way through the cave twice on one dive!

Green Island occupied us on the afternoon of the second day and the morning of the third day.  In less than 14 metres of water, we had 30 to 40 grey nurses (Muhunthan sat on a rock and counted all the grey nurses he could see within sight and counted 20 in about 30m viz), a massive school of dusky eagle rays that were frollicking in the current over the sand (people were putting the numbers in hundreds), a couple of bull rays, a decent sized shovel nose ray, wobbegongs, turtles and columns of fish.  And to top it all off, the water temperature was a balmy 20 degrees.  Green Island can be a bit of hit and miss, but there was only one word to describe it this long weekend - FANTASTIC.  Oh yes, did we mention being able to hear the migrating whales under water?

We finished off the weekend on a little reef called Bait Reef (or Gaol Reef), which offered 25m viz, two bull rays - one of which was wider than the boat we were on (the remora fish were so big that they looked like little sharks), a fleet of squid, octopii, cuttlefish, nudibranchs, wobbegongs and the list goes on!  And more singing whales.

Pirates, Kangaroos & Tigers

And if the dive life wasn't spectacular, we managed to gorge ourselves on food (some of us more so than others - Terry with his 500g Viking Steak, Muhunthan and Alf who managed to continue eating well into the night on Sunday when the others were completely stuffed).

Alf reminded us on Saturday that we had missed out on the International Talk Like a Pirate Day on 19 September (you think we're kidding?  Check out http://www.talklikeapirate.com/about.html).  So, to make up for being remiss, we entertained the locals at the Kiosk with renditions of pirate talk although, most of the time, this constituted of "Arr, me hardies" and "Walk the plank".  Richard entertained us with his narration of how ITLAPD started - he could replace Sir David Attenborough on the Discovery Channel.

Meanwhile, our waitress at the Kiosk, Christie, turned out to be quite a fun gal, dishing back about as much cheek as we gave here.  Thankfully, none of us were wearing Dive 2000 t-shirts - we would never be allowed back!  Muhunthan also celebrated his 600th dive, which was marked by a cake for dessert (although, there probably would have been cake anyway).

A short visit to Smoky Cape Lighthouse at South West Rocks gave us magnificent views of the various dive sites, Hat Head National Park and the area around South West Rocks, as well as a number of breaching whales.  Phil discovered the local wildlife (kangaroos) and thought he would have his photo taken with one.  Of course, it was no mean task getting Phil to get closer to the kangaroo, despite Liz's best efforts.  And while Phil thought he was going to have a photo taken, Liz managed to video the whole episode.  The kangaroo was so bored, he relieved himself (also on video)!  As one passer-by said, "Tourists!  We want to shoot them, you want to take photos of them!".

Sunday was the footy (league, of course) grand final.  Justin was rearing to get to the Riverside Tavern at noon - he wanted his spot in front of the television.  Understandable, given that Justin had been going to the finals every year for the last 10 years and the one year he wasn't going, his team (the Tigers) were in the grand final.  After another visit to the Kiosk for lunch and more tormenting of Christie and some of us rediscovering our youths (or, in some cases, discovering it for the first time) with Cola Spiders, we turned up at the Riverside Tavern many hours before the game was to start.  It was "Go the Tigers" all of Sunday, and indeed most of Monday!  Having said that, there were a couple of North Queensland supporters who would have had a decent chance at converting the allegiance of some of male Tigers fans!

Monday saw us head home, ecstatic at such a brilliant weekend and looking forward to the next.  It's easy to understand why Muhunthan keeps going back and why Liz is so enthusiastic about the place, having been there only twice now - the staff at South West Rocks Dive Centre are great, the diving is fantastic, the environment is very pleasant.

So look out for the next South West Rocks trip, coming soon!  We will also hopefully have more photos from the trip on the website soon.