Helen and Randall on the road

After a dreadful night’s sleep at the Global Backpackers on the Waterfront, a conveniently located but badly run huge backpackers hostel on the Esplanade in Cairns, we made it to the Vagabond on time for an 8am sailing to the reef.

3 and a 1/2 hours later Randall and I were in the water for our first dive, before lunch; as the only two certified divers on the trip we got priority, so we were off with the dive instructor on a tour of Thetford reef, diving to a max depth of 14 metres as everything is so close to the surface.

We were looked after amazingly by skipper Paul, First Mate and hostess Belle, and Dive Instructor Dwayne who fed and watered us regularly as well as kitting us and breaking down all our diving gear for us…luxury!

After lunch we headed to another site on the same part of the reef, for more diving and snorkelling action – there were three people (Craig, Enrico and Jean) doing unqualified ‘training’ dives and another two (Deb and Phil) just snorkelling. On this dive, despite not exactly following the dive plan (Dwayne the guide was a stand-in who didn’t know this part of the reef as well as the3 usual instructor/guide) we did some amazing swim-throughs of coral canyons, and saw sea turtles close up, as well as all the incredible corals and brightly coloured fish.

We spent the night at this site, and after a glorious sunset:

Randall went on a night dive, while I had a couple of cold beers with the rest of the crew and company.

The next morning after breakfast Randall and I were in the water for our first dive at 8am, and we attempted – fairly unsuccessfully – to take photos with the underwater camera:

The colours from the camera *really* don’t do the subject matter justice sadly…we saw some of the ‘professional’ pics, and to get the colours underwater they needed huge lamps.

Then we moved to another spot closer to the edge of the reef where Randall dived again and I snorkelled, as there was loads of incredible coral and also whole families of parrot-fish really close to the surface.

Finally skipper Paul announced that ‘the pool is closed’ and we all packed up and ate lunch before the beautiful sail back to Cairns.