John has his passport back (a friend took it on a little round-trip) and at last I can finally plan our itinerary! We'll fly to Brisbane on January 9th and will spend around three weeks exploring the north-east coast, Great Barrier reef and all. The choice of diving packages is overwhelming, so I'd be interested to hear about your recommendations and experiences, pointers to blog entries etc. (Personal experiences are much more valuable than guide book recommendations or searching companies websites--I can tell a lot about a dive centre from people's accounts.)

Also, although we are both seasoned divers, it's about time we got a PADI open water certificate Prices vary a lot and there seems to be a requirement for a medical, including chest x-ray (a practice that BSAC stopped ages ago). Is this true for a basic qualification (3 day course)at every dive centre? Again, what were your experiences?

Thanks for any pointers/advise!

I'm jealous--I won't be going back to Brisbane until August! I can't give a whole lot of advice on diving, since I'm not yet certified and have only done one intro dive up on the Reef. I can give vague recommendations, like that my friends had a blast going to Cairns for 9 days and doing a live aboard to get their certification.

However, I'm mainly posting to say one thing: don't have anything to do with Deep Sea Diver's Den in Cairns. My friends had an absolutely terrible experience with them during a 2 or 3-day liveaboard trip. They were not given half of the things advertised and the trip culminated in them doing a dive with one of the "experienced" people working there. It turned out that she had only ever done enough dives to get her certification and was absolutely terrified of being underwater. She got about 5m under and freaked out and motioned for them to go on and she was just going to go back to the surface. They weren't sure what to do, but when they tried to follow her, she freaked out even more, so they just let her go back to the top since they were right by the boat. After they finished their dive and came back on the boat, they were berated for the remainder of the trip and treated like absolute dirt...because they did what the girl, who worked there, told them to do.

One of these same friends did a liveaboard later with Cairns Dive Center and said it was an awesome experience and couldn't even compare to the first.

Hope that helps a little!

Thanks Stomps!

A liveaboard sounds awesome, we might do that, since we're not complete newbies (an intro dive is always recommended, and we'll be doing that anyway).

Some of the dive centres have dire reputations. I hear tales of divers being left behind or complete novices being shown how the regulator fits and then shoved overboard and taken down to 40 metres. No wonder they get terrified

It's not just Australia, of course. I've seen plenty of dubious practices elsewhere.

Mike Ball is an absolutely fantastic dive operation. My wife and I dive all over the world and have yet to experience the level of professionalism and fun we had on a 4 day liveaboard with them. They had an experienced crew, comprehensive dive briefings before every dive, knowledgeable divemasters, great food and accomodations, and plenty of fun just cruisin' along. The level of experience in our group ranged from 20 to 400+ dives, but everyone walked away happy with their experience and we made some good friends.

www.mikeball.com

I think it is Mike Ball that does the Cod Hole, arguably Australia's premier dive location - might be others like Pro Dive who do it too, but it's a three-four day liveaboard and pricey too.

The Yongala is reputed to be in the worlds ten best wreck dives, and that's further south, near Townsville.

I reckon you need to have a weather eye as much as anything WW for we are getting into tropical storms season, so do some checking on arrival in Brisbane, www.bom.gov.au to give you that.

Ironically, I did my PADI in Thailand and have never used a dive company in Oz but the likes of Mike Ball and Pro Dive do have good names.
There's liveaboards which are PADI conveyor lines to some extent and bottom level prices of $300+ with add ons will be indicative of that.

If it's looking a little unsettled weatherwise up about Cairns, it is often quite different in Whitsundays and www.prodive.com.au have two dive vessels operating from there to do reef and Yongala.
There's also a number of sailing vessels that do two-three day sailing trips about the Whitsundays and you can do diving as an add on with some of them, www.ozsail.com.au being indicative of them.

It might be worthwhile to get up to Airlie Beach (Prosperpine) and see what the weather looks like being and what is on offer as often great last minute deals to be had.

Try and decide on your destination and have a look now via www.webjet.com.au to see what best fly prices are for they will be somewhat higher if you just book a day or two ahead, and once seeing best price, book direct with airline.

If weather is dirty up north, you could also consider further south the likes of McKay, Rockhamptom, 1770, Bundaberg and even Brisbane for Moreton Island wrecks artificial reefs as far as locations go.

There's even cold water reefs down NSW and Vic that get dived as well.

Thank you very much, Gonorth!

The rain is hammering down here, but it's fine in Brisbane today. Knowing our luck, that situation will reverse when we get there so we better play it by ear, but that means I can't book the flights too far ahead.

The diving sounds absolutely fantastic! I'm tempted by the Cod Hole trip, but it's pricy. We definitely want to sail the Whitsundays, if only the storms don't blow in

The Whitsundays is a pretty safe bet up until at least the end of January Whalewatcher, and often beyond.

Further north usually cops the brunt of storms/cyclones (not that they are all that often - quite a few years between them at times actually, but then we have all this so called global warming climate change going on and right over opposite corner in SW WA just copped a hammering)

It'll be warm and muggy without the storms but then you're used to equatorial tropics, so you'll know hoe to sweat!