Come Sail Your Ships Around Me*

17 March 2010
We drove 60km north to Port Douglas and despite the cyclone warning took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef. On the drive up Captain Cook Highway we passed a few huge mangrove swamps and some dramatic coastal scenery where the rainforest comes down straight to the sea (more about the rainforest later). Port Douglas is described in the guide book as a “resort town with a relaxed outlook and an upmarket appeal for minor celebrities” – not sure that Chris and Terry come into that category but it was where they stayed last week. We were only here to board a boat to take us to the outer reef – we had been advised to visit the outer reef because the coral is pristine and has not been degraded. We chose to go with a highly professional company called Poseidon and they took us out about 70km from the coast in a large, comfortable and very fast catamaran to the Agincourt Ribbon Reef. There was a strong wind of about 25 to 30 knots and a tidal swell of 1m to 1.5m we were unsure if us novice snorkelers would be able to even get in the water let alone see any of the reef. The crew were incredibly helpful and kitted us out with snorkels, masks (including one with prescription lenses for G), flippers (including size 12s for G) and something they called “stinger suits” to prevent us getting stung by the numerous jelly fish around this time of year. A stinger suit is in fact a one-piece, skin-tight, lycra body suit with a hood which is very difficult to put on, even more difficult to take off and very unflattering whilst on because it shows up all the lumps and bumps which after three months of hotel living and dining out are all in the wrong places! Chris would only be photographed wearing hers whilst in the water.
Forgetting fashion we dived into the beautifully warm water and headed for the first reef. We both thought we are strong swimmers but out in the ocean with that swell we realised that perhaps we aren’t. Nevertheless we made it to the reef and were amazed by the variety and colours of the marine life. Gregg kept having problems with his face mask and had to head back to the boat but not before having seen some giant clams and beautiful parrot fish. The face mask problem was caused by his moustache allowing water into the mask – this was remedied for snorkelling sessions two and three by an even greater liberal application of petroleum jelly to his moustache than on the first trip. Meantime while he was sorting this out Chris ventured further around the reef and saw a large number of sea anemones, parrotfish, butterflyfish and many more, the names of which have not been retained despite a very interesting talk by a marine biologist as we sailed between reefs. Chris loved it so much she was almost the last person back on the boat.
The second session on a different part of the reef revealed a whole new world of fluorescent corals as well as hard corals looking like huge plate fungi but it was the huge variety of sealife on this reef that was amazing with shoals of small electric blue fish swimming around us. The clown fish were very skittish and come in a variety of colours. There were also a few large green turtles at this site which were magnificent – we have seen them in aquaria but never swimming free in the sea like this. It was all so amazingly beautiful – we decided to give the photography a rest because we weren’t sure about how we’d get on with (an expensive to hire) underwater camera on our first ocean snorkelling trip, instead we have numerous vivid memories and you’ll have to look on Wikipedia! We saw: angelfish, bullfish (always in pairs) triggerfish, goatfish, sea stars and even a couple of non-aggressive sharks.
We did a third snorkelling trip on a different reef and, once again, Chris was almost last back on board having found her own crew member to give her a guided tour of the reef! We shall not go on any longer about how wonderful it all was for danger of T commenting something like “very nice narrative but come on guys we’ve all seen Finding Nemo”.
Swimming in such deep water (on the edge of the reefs it can be quite scary to look down into the ocean depths) and with such big waves was very tiring and on the trip home we just sat on the upper deck and watched the huge waves send gallons of water spraying over the boat. On the return we were told how well we did snorkelling for the first time in such rough seas. Chris should feel rightly proud of herself considering how long she was in the water at each ‘dive’ because we were constantly swimming against the current (a thoughtful safety trick by the crew on mooring the boat at each site meant that if anyone got too tired to swim the current would just carry them back to the boat).

In the evening back in Cairns St. Patrick Day celebrations were in full swing (evidently over 40% of Australians claim Irish ancestry) with two quite incongruous sights – a shop called ‘Singapore Charlie’s’ selling a huge variety of St. Patrick merchandise and a couple of Aboriginal people wearing green wigs. So we bucked the trend and went to a very nice Italian restaurant which makes its own (very good) pasta, we also had a bottle South Australian wine made from Sangiovese and Barbera grapes – we didn’t know they even grew these varieties so we read the label which had a lot of information about the planting of the vines and the cellaring etc and finished by saying “we make a bloody good drink”. Indeed they do.