The SS Yongala
We've been trying to dive a wreck for some time now, but luck as always been against us. The first wreck we wanted to dive was actually an artificial wreck reef called the Cochran Reef near Bundaberg. The reef there is made out of 3 small planes, several Volkswagen Combis and some other bits. We heard it's pretty good, but unfortunately the boat which was supposed to take us there had broken down and then when the boat was repaired, the weather was bad so we enventually moved on.
Second one we were keen to dive was called the Karma ship wreck, which was apparently a drug running boat, sunk deliberately for the drug lord to escape without getting caught. Again the dive boat was broken, or maybe we were the only ones wanting to out that day and the dive guy couldn't be bothered.
But we finally got to dive a wreck on the 30th December. It wasn't any other than one of Australia's best wrecks to dive on as well as one of the best dives in Australia. And it didn't disappoint.
The SS Yongala was a passenger ship for the upper class which ran into huge trouble in 1911 when it steamed right into a massive cyclone about 20km offshore Ayr. The cyclone had generated winds of 300km/h speed and 15 m high waves. No need to say that the SS Yongola found a very quick ending here and sank to about 28m with all 121 people on board.
It wasn't for another 50 years later that the Yongola was finally found and ended one of the biggest ship disappearance mysteries in Australian history.
So anyway, hope you all enjoyed the little history lesson there but now more about the actual dive :)
Well, it was ... amazing!!! Definitely one of my favourite ones! The current was very strong so we had to go down on a rope until we finally saw the ship. It is completely overgrown with the finest and most colourful corals and I don't think I've ever seen that many fish in one place before. There were loads of small fish, but also very big ones, like a huge swarm of barracudas, giant trevally, maori wrasses, longfin batfish and loads more. Of course a turtle was there too munching away on some stuff on one of the masts. One thing that we got warned about, was the amount of sea snakes down there. Sea snakes are highly venomous with apparently a venom that potent it can kill 10 men in one go, but luckily they are rather friendly and also very curious and often come up to divers to check you out.
Sure enough on the second dive, my dive master told me to turn around and when I did, I found this snake right in front of me sniffing me out. I could see it's little split tongue hanging out as it was coming right up to me to have a good look. Apparently they like to wind their bodies around human legs and arms to play about a little, but as it was my first snake encounter I chose to keep my arms behind my back so it couldn't curl itself around them. After it had a good look, it just swam off. I was pretty chuffed!!
We didn't go into the wreck, as that is very dangerous and also it's disrespectful to all the people that have lost their lifes there and are mostly still in the ship, but we could see into some rooms, like the engine room, a bathroom and toilets, which was pretty weird.
Because of the strong current around the ship we first swam from the back of the ship to the front, which was against the current and then we'd just let the current take us back to the front, which was also pretty cool.
We didn't take any pictures, but I downloaded some from the net:
A longfin batfish:
Olive Sea Snake
No comments:
Post a Comment