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During the Pro Dive Course I met a guy from Denmark called Jan. We hit it off straight away (same silly sense of humour!). We both wanted to dive a shipwreck off the Queensland coast called HMS Yongala. Aparently it was purposely sunk in the 90's and is mean't to be in the top 10 dive sites in the world.
We both wanted to dive the wreck and Jan had a car so we sent off from Cairns and made our way down to Magnetic Island for 1 night. It took us about 5 hours to get there and culminated with a short ferry ride over to the island. We stayed at the base backpackers. The hostel was a little dirty and the rooms very cramped but the atmosphere was really cool. It was the first hostel that I had stayed at with a bar (so we made good use of it).
The next day we set off to Ayr (location of HMS Yongala). When we arrived we stopped at a dive shop to get our dive booked, but after talking to the shop assistant it was apparent that due to the recent storms in the area, it would not be worth diving the wreck for at least 2 weeks. So a quick decision was made for us to travel south to Airley Beach (home of the Whitsunday Islands). Myself and Jan were both really disappointed that we hadn't done a dive we decided to do a dive off the coast at Airley Beach instead! According to the dive operator, the islands around Airley were sheltered from the storm so water visibility would be ok.
Next day we took the boat out with a company called Tropical Dives to a dive site called Manta Ray bay. I'm sure you can guess what type of fish were in abundance there! The day started really promising, fantastic clear blue skies, temperatures in the thirties and amazing scenery. Unfortunatelty the diving was not so good! Visibility was so poor that at times you would lose your diving buddy in the merky green waters. So after a disapointing day diving we decided to cheer ourselves up with several jugs of Toohey's Extra Dry!
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