So, Ayers Rock, check, dive the HMAS Brisbane, check. Did the wreck dive today and it was AWESOME. Everything Dave from the China trip had cracked it up to be. I was diving in the ships engine room for goodness sake! How cool is that! There were wheelie things and tank things, all sorts of ship engine bits ;) And we went through the bathrooms and the toilets and sinks were still there. In need of a good clean mind you but anywho.. ;) Its amazing isnt it when you see stuff on tv or in the movies so it feels totally normal, like wreck diving, and then you do it and I thought, wow this isnt a disney movie, Im actually here doing this!

There were all kinds of windows and entrances and we'd swim over a big trapdoor thingy (I dont know what the proper name for those is) and I thought, O such a shame we wont be doing anything cool like dropping down into there. But we DID and I had a torch and everything! I was very excited. So excited in fact that when the instructor went to check my air I had 10 out of 220 left. Id been doing some crazy 'oh my god im floating up im going to scrape my head on that bit of rusty steel, oh no im too far right im going to scratch my ankle on the barnacles,, ARGH Im going to hit the bottom and its covered in STONEFISH!' (See Billy Connolly live in Adelaide for a very amusing sketch about standing on a stonefish being THE WORST PAIN KNOWN TO HUMANKIND). Anyway, I didnt stand on one, but I did run out of air which is obviously a problem. So I buddy breathed off my instructors alternate reg, which meant I had to hang on to him like a little limpet for the rest of the dive. It was quite romantic really. Well, it wouldve been had this not been Dave, from Sheffield..

He'd already had trouble with me on my first dive when I was too light (??) to descend. Later figured out that wearing my normal weight belt was not enough to sink the industrial thickness wetsuits we had to wear because of the sharp stuff on the wreck. So I was too light. Dont worry said the instructor, ill pull you down by your fins. That was not happening, I got pulled down a couple of metres and then just floated straight back up. So they stuck a 3 pound weight in the pocket on each side of me and had a second attempt which basically involved taking both my legs and rugby tackle-dragging me halfway down to the bottom of the ocean. It was all very amusing. When I say amusing I mean of course terrifying, try equalising your ears in a controlled manner when someones dragging you deeper by both of your legs. There was stuff happening in my ears like fireworks. My breathing was so panicked that I cleared the tank in 19 minutes. Now that people is quite something. All the other divers surfaced about 20 minutes later going - where were you!? So anyway, wreck diving is fun and nothing scary or moray eel shaped came out to get me. My worst enemy in that sea was... me! ;)