Best Diving in Australia - Top 10
Far Northern Great Barrier Reef, North of Cairns – Day Trips from Port Douglas & Liveaboards to the Ribbon Reefs
I have made this review to look at a few of the aspects of this area that I feel are glossed over in trip reports and other reviews that I have read. A quick google search will tell you all you could need to know about specific sites and the diving in general.
GREAT BARRIER REEF: PORT DOUGLAS AND SURROUNDING AREAS
The city of Cairns in Far North Queensland may be the most well know dive spot on the Great Barrier Reef and a prominent fixture on the East Coast backpacker circuit. The diving here is affordable by Australian standards and gives a fair indication of what the Barrier Reef has to offer while great rates for Open Water tickets ensure that more new divers are educated than nearly any other part of the globe. The reefs visited, however, are often chosen more for their suitability for these new divers & snorkelers and are closer to shore to keep the trip times down.
For the more experienced diver a trip North of this area will really pay dividends and show what the Barrier Reef is famous for. Isolated Pinnacles swathed in glorious hard coral, bountiful pelagics, enormous fish & even Whale encounters in season. Every trip here will take you to the very outer edge of the reef with the majority of the top dives being conducted on pinnacles between slivers of reef called the Ribbon Reefs. Starting with Agincourt Reef (more on this below) in the south of the area, these long, thin reefs are roughly orientated on a North-South axis and mark where the edge of the Australian continent shelves off into abyssal depths. The proximity to the open ocean water of the Coral Sea ensures reasonably reliable visibility & fantastic encounters with some incredible wildlife.
Be advised that scuba diving here is expensive. A 7 day liveaboard here is comparable with a week on a mid to top level boat in Komodo or Raja Ampat, and a 3 tank day trip will set you back close to US$300. As a disclosure of my experiences here I should advise that all my diving was done as a volunteer on various boats, working for free dives – in the case of the day trips from Port Douglas I was able to dive the sites numerous times in different moon phases and experience them in every type of weather & current. I was here over ‘the wet’ – Australia’s summer – where the conditions can be less than ideal, though I was rarely left in port due to inclement weather and never experienced a bad dive. The boats used here are sturdy, comfortable and most have stabilising features; however even so, those prone to debilitating seasickness would be well advised to keep a good eye on the conditions.
Port Douglas Day Trips:
Port Douglas is an old fishing village cum glitzy resort town on a spit of land protruding out from the area’s rainforest clad mountains. The vast majority of the accommodation here is in big name resorts and can be reasonably affordable for those wishing to live the pampered life for a week. There is also a large backpacker/dive themed hostel there for the more adventurous travellers who want to get away from the (admittedly so much fun that it should be illegal) Cairns hostel world. There are regular busses from Cairns and some of the operators will pick you up in their own company coaches. The price is only marginally more expensive than the Cairns boats and I would really advise everyone to head up here.
The Operators here tend to either visit the Agincourt complex of reefs, which are more numerous and in my opinion feature more varied and superior quality diving or Opel Reef to the south – though my favourite ever Great Barrier Reef dive, Split Bommie, is on Opel Reef but was unfortunately rarely visited in my time there. The moorings are privately registered with the QLD government and though a couple of the operators have agreements on shared usage of sites they do not swap reefs. A cursory glance on each companies’ website will confirm which reef they visit.
Most of the boats will feature a mix of snorkelers & divers and will visit 2 or 3 different sites in a day with both groups exploring the same site. One of the largest companies out there, Quicksilver Cruises, has a different approach; they maintain a static, floating pontoon to which the majority of the snorkelers and families are taken while a separate boat ‘Silverswift’ goes out with divers and more adventurous snorkelers and visits a selection of sites. All boats provide buffet lunches and are large enough for everyone to be able to sit comfortably at a table throughout the day when not in the water.
The sites in the Agincourt group are largely based around big bommies in the lee of the reef with slack currents and a few drift dives when water movement allows. You can expect to encounter plenty of Grey Reef Sharks, large predatory Groupers & Trevally and what I think of as one of the best aspect of diving in Australia: edible fish. Having spent a lot of time diving in Asia I love to come back to Australia and regularly dive with animals that are non-existent elsewhere. This is particularly true of the Agincourt Reefs; Napoleon Wrasse, Spanish Mackerel, Tunas, Giant Trevally, Barramundi Cod & more Coral Trout than you can shake a stick at. It is only once you have spent time on a truly healthy reef that you realise how much even the finest sites in most of Asia lack these animals.
By contrast, Opel reef is a separate large oval reef. Dives here are what I consider to be classic Barrier Reef dives; along the edge of the reef from 20 metres depth working up to the reef flat. It has great hard coral cover and looks fantastic in the shallows with the sun out. The aforementioned ‘Split Bommie’ site is set back slightly from the reef proper and features two large pinnacles joined at the base in around 30 metres of water. Being more irregular that the main reef the bommies feature plenty of nooks and hiding holes for a variety of creatures including two of the largest Cuttlefish I have ever seen. I’ve also heard talk of visits from Hammerhead sharks from time to time.
GREAT BARRIER REEF: RIBBON REEFS
Liveaboard Trips to the Ribbon Reefs:
This is where the real magic happens. There are currently 3 operators regularly offering 3 day, 4 day & 7 day trips up to the famous ‘Cod Hole’ based at Ribbon Reef #9, off-shore from Lizard Island with the 4 & 7 day trips then heading out to the open ocean to visit the very sharky Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea for some good shark diving. The more pricey companies will fly you either to or from Lizard island for the 3 day & 4 day trips where the 7 day ones will start and finish at Cairns. I’m not in possession of the required robustness of bank account to have visited Osprey Reef but I can wax lyrical all day about the Ribbon Reef portion of the trips. You can expect anything and everything to turn up on these trips if your luck is in. Additionally, I think I enjoyed the feeling of travelling through and diving reefs that s2ee very little action as enjoyable as the dives themselves.
The sites are similar to those mentioned above but are deeper, the water clearer, the predatory fish bigger, schools of fish larger and feature far more of the little creatures than further south. My personal favourites are ‘Steve’s Bommie’ – though I think this is everyone’s favourite - and ‘Pixie Pinnacle’. Both are huge pillars of coral set back in the blue in between gaps in the Ribbon Reefs. Whilst on Steve’s Bommie I looked up from admiring a Frogfish & a couple of Stonefish to see the biggest Grey Reef shark I’ve ever witnessed swimming past. A special mention for night dives here – with the floodlights on at the rear of the boat night dives turn into carnage with bait fish attracted to the light and then brutally slaughtered by Giant & Black trevally and the odd shark. I was lucky enough to see a couple of enormous free swimming Moray Eels join the fun at one point too. All this with weather so bad we couldn’t even make it up to the Cod Hole.
Though the experience of these trips is very weather dependent and the financial outlay considerable I would still suggest a visit to anyone who appreciates witnessing a healthy reef system complete with all the top predators, coral in great condition and the feeling of scuba diving somewhere remote.
