diving at Castle Rock, Agincourt Reef 1 - Linnea and fish

Port Douglas (Part II)

My time in Port Douglas comes to an end tonight as I fly out to Cape Town early tomorrow morning (eek!) I've had a great time with Dad and Linnea - went to the reef and did some diving, took a trip out to Low Isles, and went for a really long walk along the beach into town. We were supposed to go flying again today but Dad got called into work - shame because the weather is beautiful today. So for now he's stuck with the record of having to make an emergency landing 50% of the time when flying with me! :-p

Reef Trip

overly friendly flowery cod

Dad, Linnea and I all went out on Silversonic (Quicksilver's dive boat) to go diving at the Agincourt ribbon reef system. We did 2 dives, skipping the middle dive so we could get a good lunch - have to make the most of the prawns! Tested my underwater camera housing on the first dive putting 2 napkins and a tub of rice in it to make sure it was water tight. All was well (ie the napkins were still dry) so we put the camera in for the second dive and I took some happy snaps. It works well enough. Not worth taking deeper than probably 10 metres since I don't have an external flash. The diving was great as usual up here. We only saw one shark - resting peacefully below us. Lots of fish of course including one flowery cod (pictured above) that kept following us around. Apparently it's name is Daisy. There was also a nice triggerfish that kept swimming out of shot when I tried to photograph it - got him eventually! On the trip back to the marina we sighted a pod of dwarf minke whales as well. Could only see their dorsal fins though.

Walk to town

four mile beach - looking south

There is actually a bus into town but I like to walk because I'm a little bit mad. I walked all the way along four mile beach to get there. Does anyone remember the gay couple from the first series of The Block? Well they were running along the beach and I kept seeing them in town too - took me a while to figure out why they looked familiar. At the town end of the beach there's beach chairs with umbrellas - it looks so resorty I had to laugh. The far end of the beach (near the unit) gets used alot by kite surfers. There were heaps of them because the wind was good. Some of them were really good doing aerial tricks and all.

Low Isles

Low Isles

Went out on Wavedancer to Low Isles for the day. That's the boat that Dad skippers. Wavedancer is Quicksilver's sail boat. She cruises out to Low Isles and anchors off the beach for the day. Passengers can snorkel, dive, laze on the beach or on the boat. It's a very cruisey day. Plenty of prawns for lunch again :-) I went snorkelling a couple of times with my camera. Snorkelling with the camera isn't as good as diving with it - can't really see what's on the screen so you don't know what you're pointing the camera at. Plus visibility around the island isn't as good as out at the reef. I lounged around on the beach for a bit and managed to get a sunburned ear - oops! Off one side of the island there were a few sharks enjoying a large school of fish. Don't think the fish were enjoying the sharks very much though :-( At the end of the day we headed back to the marina under sail which was nice.

That's it for Port Douglas, the next instalment should be from Cape Town!