Dunsborough January 2001

I flew with Ansett from Brisbane to Perth. We changed planes in Adelaide, which was quite fortunate because the first plane was an ageing 737 with very uncomfortable seats. The meal was a revolting concoction, which was allegedly lamb curry. I couldn't remember having had a worse meal on an airline in years, which is quite an achievement. Still I suppose there was an in-flight movie, even if it did have Liz Hurley in it.

When I last went to WA in 1997, I found that everything was hard work, because it wasn't very well geared up towards tourism. This time I had tried to book everything in advance. The plan was to stay in Perth for the night and then get the bus to Dunsborough, stay there three nights and get the bus back to Perth.

Dunsborough's a popular place for Perth residents to spend the weekend as it's about 2½-3 hours by car. There are two bus companies that offer services there, South West Coachlines and Westrail. I chose Westrail because I had their number. I'd arranged to pick up the ticket at the depot because they don't seem to have any ticket agencies outside of the state. The bus stops everywhere, so it takes about 4¾ hours. There is the option to get the train half way, but you still connect with the same bus for the second half of the journey. I suppose you get an extra hour in bed, but I didn't think it was worth the hassle. It probably costs more too.

The bus arrived more or less on time at 1:15pm. I'd booked into the Dunsborough Inn and had forgotten to asked them if they picked up from the bus. Just about every other backpackers does. There was no-one there, but the tourist office was nearby, so I asked where the place was and it wasn't that far, though everywhere seems further when you've got 40lbs of luggage to carry. When I got there, they weren't open. They were closed until 2.30pm. And I thought "welcome to WA". Where else in Australia would you find a backpackers that shut when the bus came in?

When I finally sorted out my room, it was pretty good. They were only charging $25 for a single and the whole place was new, modern and clean. It was also fairly quiet. There seemed to be hardly anyone else around the place.

I was quite surprised about the size of the town. There were several shops, including a reasonable supermarket, quite a few takeaways and a pub. The beach was fairly nearby, though nothing special. It was quite a thin strip of sand and there was no surf. Margaret River is only a few miles away though, and that has some of the best surf breaks in Australia if you're into that sort of thing.

There was only one real reason why I'd come to Dunsborough. It's called the HMAS Swan and it's a River class Frigate Destroyer Escort which was decommissioned in 1996 and gifted to Busselton shire as an artificial reef. Various volunteers cleaned the ship up and it was finally sank in about 31m on December 14th 1997. The wreck is 112m in length and holes have been cut into most areas of the ship to allow access to divers.

I had booked four dives on the Swan with Cape Dive. They not only had nitrox fills available, but they also had steel tanks with DIN fittings, though you had to arrange in advance if you wanted to use them. Unfortunately I didn't have a nitrox qualified buddy, so couldn't take full advantage.

For the first dive, you have to follow one of their guides, but after that you're allowed to go off in buddy pairs. The viz was about 20m on all the dives, so when you go to 10m on the descent line, you could see the wreck laid out in front of you. A big shoal of porcupine fish hang around the bows.

Four dives was enough to see most of the ship. The holes in the side are large, so it's not a tight squeeze. You can swim inside and a lot of it has been left intact. The officer's mess is recognisable and there are still wooden bunks in some of the cabins. There's the radar room, with the radar sets still in there and you can go into the bridge and sit in the captain's chair. At the bottom of the wreck is the ammunition store and you can see where all the shells used to be stored. There's also the engine room, though this is one of the few parts that has been sealed. The only real disappointment was that the guns had been removed.

One side of the ship has got quite a lot of algal and Telesto coral growth. Bullseyes hide inside the ship and there are also some urchins and anemones in there. The most growth has occurred around the communications tower midships, which is an interesting place to finish off your dive. The tower goes up to about 8m and is buoyed, so you can finish off your safety stop on the line looking down at the wreck. The clarity of the water meant that I got a distinct feeling of vertigo whilst doing this. I've dived plenty of sheer walls before without being affected.

The dives are done as a 2 tank dive with a shortish surface interval during which food and drinks are available. They request that you do a 5 minute safety stop. As the interval was only about an hour and a half, I did the 5 minutes at the top of the comms tower and then swam back to the line at about 5m. This gave me a total stop time of 10 mins, which gave me a bit more safety. On the second trip, I used 32% nitrox to give myself an added safety margin.

My original plan had been to go and see some of the caves in the region, but Cape Dive were trying to organise a trip to the Busselton jetty, so naturally that took preference! The jetty itself is 1.9km long. There's a train that takes tourists, and divers, down the pier, but the end section is no longer connected after a fire. There were plans to open an underwater observatory as part of the restoration project. Whilst you can get the train, it's easier to do it by boat and we managed to find four people who were interested, so off we went.

The dive is ideal for the beginner as it's only 8m deep and it's impossible to get lost. The viz was good at 15m and as we descended there were big shoals of yellowtail and samson fish. The wooden pylons are covered in growth and the colours were amazing, rivalling any coral reef I've ever seen. There were loads of nudibranchs and an octopus and a cuttlefish. It was a thoroughly enjoyable, and very easy, dive.

So after my flying visit of only 3 nights, I got on a virtually empty bus back to Perth on Saturday afternoon having dived that morning. It was well worth the detour south. My plan was then to head north to Coral Bay on the Sunday evening.

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