Joel and I are both certified divers, so going to the Great Barrier Reef was something we have both been looking forward to since first booking our flights to Australia. We got to Cairns on Thursday evening after another long coach drive up the coast, and as soon as we got here I had to do a phone interview for a job I applied for back home (fingers crossed about that!). The next day we had a bit of a lie in, and then booked another couple of day trips for our last week in Australia - the people at the reception desk in the hostel did it all for us which was great. We then had to go to the dive shop to check in for our trip and get some of our gear sorted, and in the evening we went to a place called Reef Teach. This was a 2 hour presentation from a marine biologist telling us about all the things we might see on the reef - and there were loads of cool things! So many different fish, types of coral, and bigger things like sea turtles and sharks. It was really helpful because it told us how to identify the different things we saw (which was great because we never know what fish we have actually seen), and it also told us where to look to see different things, it was a really interesting presentation. The next morning we were up bright and early to be picked up and taken to the dive shop, where we checked in properly, and then it was down to the marina to get on the boat. From Cairns it was a 4 hour trip to the Outer Reef where we would be diving - we both felt a bit seasick at first, but as soon as our tablets kicked in we started enjoying ourselves. On the way out to the reef we spotted dolpins and a pod of pilot whales, so we were getting really excited to start diving! Our first stop was at Milln Reef, where we did our first dive at a place called Petaj Bommie. We did our first dive with an instructor because we hadn't dived for around 6 months - it was really nice to get in the water and see all the fish and coral, it was so beautiful - so many different colours of coral and loads of different fish. We even saw a massive boulder coral which was a few times bigger than me! After the first dive we moved to another part of Milln Reef called Whale Bommie, and we stayed here for the rest of the day, doing 3 more dives in the afternoon as well as a night dive. We did all of these unguided so we got to go on our own and explore. We were a bit aprehensive about this at first as we have never had to navigate underwater for ourselves before, but it turned out to actually be quite easy. We got to see loads more than when we were diving with a group and we got to decide where we went and what we looked at. This dive site was really good as well, it was full of coral, christmas tree worms (which disappear really quickly if you wave a hand in front of them), some huge giant clams and loads of different types of fish like goat fish and unicorn fish. We also got to see some of the bigger things that live on the reef - a white tip reef shark (which is very small by shark standards and not at all scary) and our first green sea turtle of the trip! We were pretty happy with our first day diving. After a night trying to sleep on the boat (which wasn't as relaxing as I'd been made to believe), we moved to another reef called Flynn Reef, where we stayed for the day - 3 daytime dives and another night dive. It was just as good as the previous day, with lodas more to see. We saw more reef sharks, loads of parrot fish, a puffer fish, large bat fish, some huge maori wrasse, a stingray, a large barracuda chilling out under the boat as well as loads more coral. The night dive was even better as got to see Brian and Neville sleeping - these are 2 absolutely huge green sea turtles, as big as a kitchen table, and they were just having a sleep in some caves under the coral, it was so amazing to see them! After another night on the boat we woke up pretty early to have another dive at Flynn Reef just after sunrise; it was quite different to the previous day because all the fish were just waking up, so we saw a lot of them being cleaned by other fish. We also saw another turtle eating some algae for breakfast, so we were very happy with that. The boat then moved to our last dive site of the trip, a place called Thetford Reef - apparently we were really lucky to go there because the boats can hardly ever go there due to weather and tide restrictions - but we were so lucky that we were able to go! There was so much more coral here than at the the other sites, and it was right underneath the boat, only around 10m away. We just cruised around enjoying all of the coral and fish, and we finally saw the one fish we had been looking for during the whole trip - Nemo! Well, a cousin of Nemo anyway, we found an Orange Finned Anemone Fish right by the mooring line the boat was tied to, which really made our trip. After our last 2 dives at the site, we headed back to Cairns, stopping off by Fitzroy Island on the way to get some group photos. It was one of the absolute highlights of our time in Australia and we are both so glad that we saved up enough money to be able to do a 3 day live aboard trip instead of just a day trip, it was definitely worth every penny!