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I did my first two dives in Sydney during the weekend. As the local university club I already joined had no dives scheduled I ended up diving with Sydney Dive Academy’s dive club Sea Masters. This worked out quite well, you don’t have to be a club member to participate in shore dives and they only charge you for the tank rental, the guided dives themselves are free.

On Saturday morning we met at the Dive Academy’s shop and after getting tanks and other rental gear for everyone we headed to the nearby Bare Island. This is one of the most popular dive sites in Sydney and there were plenty of other divers there as well. There are several different dives you can do at the site, we ended up diving the South Wall part. Entry and exit on the rocky shore were quite rough due to big waves and the vis was quite poor near the surface. Luckily conditions improved as we got deeper down (max depth was around 17 meters) and it ended up a nice shore dive with lots to see. We saw several nudibranchs, some nice overhangs at the wall and quite a few different fish species (including one really rare one, but I didn’t catch the name or get a photo of it, sadly). Near the end of the dive we were followed by two large (maybe 80 cm long) blue gropers that got pretty close to us.

On Sunday we ended up doing another pretty similar dive near Bare Island. Seas looked calm enough but underwater there was quite bit of current in the beginning and I didn’t have much chance to focus on photography. We headed to South Wall again but this time we turned back later than on Saturday so the dive ended up a pretty long one. I was actually little low on air when we got back to the Island as I was diving with a pretty small tank. On this dive we didn’t see anything that special. The blue gropers were swimming with us again and got really close and personal this time around. The guy leading our dive even started tickling them at one point!

It is nice to dive somewhere where the dive sites are actually right next to the city. While Melbourne has some great dives, the 100+ km drive from the city to the coast can be bit of a pain. And while the site was not quite rich in sea life as the pier dives near Melbourne, there was still lots to see and quite a few fish species I haven’t spotted before.

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I spent the last weekend diving on Phillip Island with MUUC. It was a joint trip with the mountaineering club and we stayed in a proper (and pretty fancy!) house instead of camping. After quite a few initial problems at the shed on Friday we finally got both the boats and the compressor on the road. While Phillip Island has a lot of stuff to see on the land as well (including the famous Penguin Parade), this was pretty much a pure diving trip for us and we didn’t really do any sightseeing.

On Saturday we did our first dive at George Kermode, a bucket dredge scuttled in 1976. The wreck lies upside down in around 20 meters of water. While some parts of the wreck were quite interesting, I didn’t really care that much for the wreck compared to some other wrecks near Melbourne. The wreck might be more interesting on the inside, we only went for a quick peep with Shawn but did no real penetrations.

The second dive was at the Pinnacles, a popular local site with two pinnacles raising from around 40 meters to 12 meters. Unfortunately, our shot line moved a bit and ended up in the wrong spot. I had already gone down with Shawn before anyone noticed this so we ended up in midwater with nothing special to see. At 20 meters we could barely see the bottom (somewhere around 30-40 meters) but there was nothing else visible. I was already considering heading back up but then Shawn noticed some shapes in the distance and we ended up finding some smaller pinnacles. They were not that impressive though, and while there were two of them, it became clear that they couldn’t be the pinnacles we were supposed to dive as their tops were at around 20 meters. Near the top surge got little annoying and there was quite a bit of current too. Just as we were getting back on boat a pod of 5 or 6 dolphins came to the area. They ended up visiting some of our divers still underwater, unfortunately I only saw them from the surface and didn’t really have chance to take any photos either.

Sunday shaped up to be a better diving day with calm seas and some pretty nice dives. First we went for a return visit to the Pinnacles, this time we got the shot line in the right place as well. It was an awesome dive with superb vis, definitely one of my favorite non-wreck dives in Victoria. While the site is quite deep, we still managed to cover quite a bit of the area. We found some very impressive cliff walls and some nice overhangs. The pinnacles are covered in corals and zoanthids and there was also a huge variety of fish life down there.

The second dive of the day was at Pyramid Rock, a famous landmark near George Kermode. None of us had dived here before and we couldn’t find any real GPS markers, so most of the dive was spent exploring. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any of the more impressive features that should have been down there, but it was still a pretty good dive and quite different to most sites I have done in Victoria. The area was almost completely covered in kelp forests and while there were no proper walls, the bottom was still quite varied with boulders and smaller holes. I also ended up seeing my first Port Jackson Shark just lying on the bottom, unfortunately in a pretty protected area so I wasn’t able to get a good shot.

After the second dive we headed back to Melbourne, cleaned the boats and rinsed the gear. Then I headed to a hostel where I was staying overnight before leaving for Sydney early on Monday morning. The weekend as a whole was another great diving trip with MUUC, too bad it will be a while before I can dive with these guys again as I will be spending a few weeks over in Sydney next before heading back to Melbourne.