Wedneesday, 14 May navy pier danger dive

We awoke on Wednesday with a mission. Find a campsite for that evening.

Now I wouldn't think this would be so difficult in a land the size of the United States but with one/tenth the population. However, there is a small but dedicated community of perennial campers that lurk at national parks to get the best camp sites. The community is split between young college leavers in rented camper vans driving across Australia saving all their money for beer and petrol. The other part of the community is the "grey nomads," retirees in expensive RVs or 4x4 with trailers.

We had been warned if we were going to beat the grey nomads, we needed to be at our campsite before 10 am.

At 9:30, we found a great place. A short hike to Mandu Mandu gorge, a top snorkel site just up the beach, the cleanest pit toilet we've ever seen, and NO generators. Like Minnesota parking lot vultures in January, we slid into their vacated spot to set a tent as far from the family tent with toddlers as possible.

We only had enough time to erect our tent on some of the hardest packed sand in Australia (4 bent tent pegs can testify to that!) before driving back to Exmouth. We arrived just in time to load up for our next dive trip: NAVY pier. Rated by our guides as one of the Top 10 dive sites in Australia.

The pier is part of the Naval Communication Stations founded by the Americans in the 70s. The American military built the towers in the States, then dissembled them bolt by bolt, shipped them to Australia, built a pier, unloaded them and rebuilt the towers.

Since then, the pier has mostly accumalated fantastic marine life. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of it was deadly. there was fire coral (neurotoxins), stone fish (neurotoxins), lion fish (neurotoxins), reef sharks (sharp teeth), carpet sharks (sharp teeth), tiger sharks (BIG sharp teeth), barracuda (tiny sharp teeth). GREAT...don't touch anything.

So, we got our dive gear, went through the military checkpoint (which despite scare tactics amounted to roll call in elementary school), then out on to the pier. Entering the water was slightly nerve-racking. We were expected to make a giant stride entry from 2 meters above the water's surface. Unfortunately, waddling forward in fins gives you a lot of time to imagine tripping and falling face first with several tons of scuba gear into water that is so clear it only looks a few feet deep. After marshalling my courage, (and considering the alternative of getting back OUT of my wetsuit!) I took the plunge. Nathan grabbed a picture (not of me, but the distance from the diving platform to the water.)

Under the water was amazing--we saw beautiful coral, schools of tropical fish (electric blue, bright yellow, lime green), and the slightly adrenaline pump of deadly coral, scorpionfish, and lion fish. We saw moray eels, a big potato cod (about 1 m), grouper, and of course some very stimulating nudibranchs. I spent a lot of time trying to remember to watch my buoyance so that I didn't bump into anything that could kill me with a subtle stinger. Some of the highlights included seeing a sleeping reef shark (about 2 m long) and an amazing large carpet shark draped over one of the pylons.

The carpet shark (called a wobbegong here) had the back half of a shark, but the front half was perfectly camoflaged with the coral. Our photo didn't turn out, but here's what he looked like....

After the dive, we drove back out to our campsite at cape range park where we settled in for a delicious meal mashed potato and thai tuna steaks over our whizzy new backpacking stove. After Nathan accepted a crushing defeat in cribbage he sulked for the rest of the evening with his book, while a slipped off to dreamland in the glow of victory (or our camp lantern).

Tomorrow...hiking the gorge and other activities on dry land.