Nelson's Bay

What a great dive. Me and M'Bates went for a first-thing in the morning dive at Nelson's bay, about 3 hours north of Sydney. I stayed with him and his mom and grandma nearby at a horse ranch hacienda place. Really quite the experience!

Two new seaslugs and a great drift. We saw so much detail, it was hard to stop in the current but necessary to catch the details.

Can you see the shark?

This octo stole my wide-angle lense after I taunted him with it. Two big tugs after he wrapped his arms around it and the chord broke. We had to lift the rock off him to get it back.

Here's a video of the action, pretty much over by 1:00.

Ah, and then it was time for Fighter World! It was kinda neat but I had a huge headache at this point.

We found this awesome weirdness in the corner of Fighter World:
"Bear's" ear is on fire.

Look mom, we made a jet!

This guy looks exactly like Maurice!
Waves are kinda like trenches...

LEI

Karin recently went to Lady Elliot Island, the southernmost island on the Great Barrier Reef.

Jervis Bay Blitz

So we showed up without planning. There wasn't any camping left at the park.
We found a crappy camp-village thing outside of the nearby town and went snorkeling.
It was ok, we saw an octo trying to be kelp by spiraling his arms up, and a three finned ray.


There's a lighthouse ruins nearby.

They blew it up in the 20's because apparently it was a badly misguiding lighthouse, and even after they turned it off the "moonlight would make it glow" and run ships aground, even though the new lighthouse was operating on the opposite head of Jervis Bay. This is obviously a case of locals getting bored and blowing some old shit up. They didn't mention that on the info board.

The new lighthouse is barely visible in this shot across the bay looking north:

I got in for a dive at Summercloud Bay. It was nice once I swam out to the end of the south head. There were fan corals, which I hadn't seen before.

Some new sponges and flat corals...

And a big new fish! I think it is an Angelfish, because some old fishermen told me. I'm not sure they were so sure. It was big, maybe 1/2 metre.

And just swimming back in the shallows there were little fish flitting. Hard to capture that shimmer in a photo really.

When I got out Karin told me a pod of 10 dolphins were playing on the other side of the bay from me, where I was actually planning to dive but didn't! Kindof a bummer, but still neat. I kinda cut my dive short due to sharky intuition / paranoia. It was a little murky. They say that dolphins keep sharks away though, because they kill them.

The countryside around Nowra is so pretty, so here's a bunch of panoramas taken while driving through.

Look at my face. Buy my hardware. Fair dinkum! -- Karin's favourite billboard. Same day service is kinda a big deal here.

We ended the day with a nice sunset in the kitchen.

Congrats to Rich W. on this fine day.