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Terrigal, October 2002

Submitted by admin on Thu, 03/08/2012 - 20:07

I was staying at the YHA in Terrigal. At that time of the year, it was quiet, even at the weekend. There only seemed to be about 5 or 6 people around in the hostel. I have a friend in Terrigal and he'd arranged for me to go diving with his dive club. I hired a wetsuit, tank and weights from the dive shop in Terrigal Haven.

On Saturday morning, we went out to a dive site called Five Shires, which was named after a wreck that went down in the area. I don't think the wreck has been found, but there is a small, flat reef of rocks there. The water was somewhat chilly 17ºC, though it wasn't too bad in the 7mm suit I had. There were lots of sponge life on the rocks and there were loads of bright coloured objects attached to the rocks, which I thought looked a bit like a medieval mace. It turns out that they're actually a type of sea squirt and are called Sea Tulips. The resemblance between them and tulips is not great. There were also some blue wrasse, red mullet and large damsel fish swimming around. However, the highlight was the common sea dragon. These weird looking creatures are related to sea horses and their camouflage is excellent. They really do look just like the sea weed they live in. I've never seen one before, so was really pleased to spot this one. The depth of the site was about 19m and we had a 44 minute dive. Towards the end, it was starting to get a bit chilly. It was nice to get back on board and in the sun, which was quite warm out of the wind. The visibility was a respectable 8m, which is not bad for the time of year.

On Sunday morning we set off again, this time to a site called First Point. It was a cliff face and was named by Captain Cook. He obviously hadn't been feeling very imaginative as the next cliff is called Second Point, etc. There were big boulders at the foot of the cliff. The fish life was much the same as the previous day's dive, with blue wrasse and lots of damsel fish. Sadly there were no dragons this time, but the viz was a bit better at 10m and it was lack of no-deco time that forced our ascent from the 25m bottom, giving us a dive time of 41 minutes.

That afternoon I went to the local wildlife park. They specialised in reptiles, so there were plenty of indigenous examples as well as some American alligators to see. They also had a spider display, with lots of specimens of the various nasty, poisonous species that live in Australia. There was also a nice underwater display of a duck billed platypus. This animal is one of only three monotremes in the world, which means it is an egg laying mammal. It's also the only poisonous mammal in the world, so it seems fitting that it should come from Australia. The male has some poison fangs near its hind legs.

Leaving Terrigal on Monday morning, I turned south. There is no orbital motorway around Sydney, so there's no quick route. Obviously I didn't drive back through the centre, but I still had to go through all the suburbs. Progress was quite slow and it felt like I was driving from one red traffic light to the next. The signposting was also not very good. Even major intersections weren't signposted that far in advance. I eventually got through as was back on the open, and mostly empty road again. From there, it was plain sailing down to my destination, Huskisson in Jervis Bay.

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