 |
| Hitch Contents |
|
 |
|
By Gavin Tyte
Print
Email
The best way of seeing the Great Barrier Reef is to learn how to hold your breath underwater for 30 minutes. Alternatively you can learn how to scuba dive. CDC (Cairns Dive Centre) came highly recommended so I forked out $350 to embark on a weeklong dive course. The course was comprised of two days classroom and pool work followed by two 'inner reef' dives and a three-day trip to the 'outer reef'.
On the first day of the course I met my diving partner, known as a buddy. In-between blowing his honker into a hanky, my buddy introduced himself as ‘Bark’. Bark was obviously suffering from a severe head cold and looked like death warmed up and so, to cheer him up I embarked on a series of highly amusing tree puns. “I see you are branching out into scuba diving? Turning over a new leaf are you?” For some reason, Bark hadn’t twigged my humour and was looking at me as if I was completely deranged. It was only when I glanced down at his name badge that I discovered his name was Mark.
We all settled down in a classroom to receive our first lecture about marine life. I looked forward to finding out about the delightful dolphins and cuddly clown fish. Instead, I learned all about the stone fish (the most deadly fish in the world), the sea snakes (all deadly), the box jellyfish (deadly again), the sharks (pretty deadly), the poisonous coral (pretty poisonous), the giant clams (keep limbs well away), the cone shells (another deadly), the saltwater crocodiles (I thought they were joking) and the blue ringed octopus (guess what, another deadly). Apart from these few deadly sea creatures the sea is quite safe as long as you can swim and your air supply doesn't run out. After some lectures on other heart-stopping subjects, it was time to enter the swimming pool.
We stood in a circle in a small swimming pool whilst the dive master showed us how to use the breathing apparatus. This consisted of a regulator (mouthpiece) attached to one or more air tanks. I found it rather hard to concentrate as my buddy Mark, standing next to me, would repeatedly blow his streaming nose into the water. I spent most of my time trying to dodge the large green globules that were threatening to cling to my legs. Then came my worst nightmare. We had to practice an emergency situation where my air supply had depleted and my buddy had to share his air supply with me. This meant putting his regulator into my mouth. With my eyes closed, desperately trying not to gag, I slowly inserted his salty, sticky piece of black rubber into my mouth and tried my hardest not to breathe.
After two days in the pool and two days diving on the inner reef we finally headed for the open sea on a three-day trip to the outer reef. The trip on the way out made most people green. The sea was rough and the funnel was cleverly positioned at the front of the boat so that the fumes blew back over the decks. The chemical toilet was potent in the extreme and the food at lunch had a distinctively chemically taste. This combination made me hang over the side of the boat in nauseous anticipation. Eventually we anchored, made a dive and were presented with a gratifying spread of colourful fish and coral. Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef is like swimming in an aquarium. We saw angelfish, butterfly fish, parrotfish, sea cucumbers, anemones, bristle stars, and coral trout. Whilst under the water, the dive master picked up a giant sea anemone and put it on his head like a wig. I quickly discovered why scuba divers rarely smile. It is impossible and potentially fatal to laugh and scuba dive at the same time. This small joke by my instructor nearly left me drowned! A similar situation occurred later on where I saw a fellow diver being mobbed by an immense shoal of fish. They were all over his head and he couldn't see where he was swimming. You could see him desperately trying to escape the pestering shoal. It wasn't until after the dive that I discovered he had been sick under water and the fish were eating his diced carrots.
During the trip we attempted two night dives. Unfortunately, I had contracted Mark's head cold, and during the first dive was unable to equalise the pressure in my blocked nasal tubes. I had to return to the boat before the dive had even started. However, I did manage to make the second night dive. Being underwater on a moonless night is black. You cannot even see your hand in front of your face. We had tiny torches that pierced a few yards into the blackness. At any moment a giant something could have grabbed me and swallowed me whole. After half an hour of rapid breathing and scanning the darkness with my torch I hadn’t seen a thing. However, when we emerged from the water everyone had tales of giant turtles, sharks and shipwrecks.
In the evenings on the boat we played games. One evening we had to perform a party piece. I teamed up with a small group of British guys to perform a personalised version of a popular sea shanty. Here's the first verse:
The instructors name is Tony
With a face like his he's lonely
So in the dead of night, when out of sight
He does it with an anemone
I won't enlighten you with the other verses, needless to say that they went downhill and involved the skipper Pete, a giant clam and the cabin girl named Nikki.
Towards the end of the trip, most of us were a little disappointed, as we hadn't seen a shark. Then, just before we were about to pull anchor and head home, someone spotted a large grey shape coming towards the boat. It was an immense (and I mean huge) shark. Everyone stood on the edge of the deck looking down into the water. The shark started circling the boat and was – according to our instructor - well over 10 feet long. Immediately we all started to put on our wet suits and snorkel gear ready to jump in and have the thrill of seeing such a large shark underwater. The dive master ran frantically around the boat stopping us from entering the water. At the time we couldn't understand why he wouldn’t let us? The danger and excitement had gone to our heads. Who wouldn't jump unto the sea with a 14 ft long tiger shark?
The dive master at Cairns Dive Centre had a job to do. He had to instruct and enable a bunch of people to dive safely. Imagine if he had taught us without any interaction or without any fun? This would have defeated the whole point wouldn’t it? The ability to use a regulator and calculate dive times wasn’t the aim of the course. It’s easy to imagine Jesus teaching his disciples with a furrowed brow and a stern face, ready to tell them how bad they were. I think this has more to do with how he’s been presented in Sunday school than reality. I reckon that when Jesus taught his disciples, he smiled, laughed and got fits of the giggles too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that much of Jesus' teaching was centred on mealtimes, full of conversation, wine and good food. Of course, sometimes he had to stop his disciples doing something stupid too – not that I remember any of them wanting to jump into shark-infested waters!
We couldn’t learn to scuba dive in isolation either. Every diver needs a buddy – even ones with severe head colds - and sometimes it’s even better when learning takes place in a group. If we hadn’t been in a group, we wouldn’t have been able to share our ideas of what creatures to look out for, techniques we could try, and experiences of sharks and giant anemones. In the same way, Jesus’ disciples needed to learn together - to be a learning community. Is that what you see church as being – a bunch of people living life to the fullest, learning together, journeying together, experiencing together, making mistakes together?
View Comments (0)
|
|
