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GEELONG DIVE CLUB'S OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER

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Welcome to the April Newsletter and what a busy summer it has been!  The Club has been extremely active with great turn outs each Wednesday for the Midweek dives and lots of fun being had on the club trips.  Included in this newsletter is the Dive Itinerary, a write up of the successful Club Dive at Melbourne Aquarium from adventurer Roddy Rocket and all the info on how this years Ewans Ponds Trip went from Pete and Bev.  Don't forget Friday 4th of April will see the Club Video from the recent trip over to S.A. to dive the Hobart, we hope to see you there!  

CLUB ITINERARY

Boat Dives require booking with shop as spaces are limited and 48 hours prior notice is required to avoid being charged for a cancellation. 

February 

March

April 

 Alfred Hospital Club Night

Thursday 4th of April will see the Geelong Dive Club traveling up to Melbourne for a presentation by the Hyperbaric Staff of the Royal Alfred Hospital.  The evening will feature talks from leading specialists in the field of hyperbaric medicine regarding the treatment of D.C.S. and most importantly, cutting edge information regarding the best way to avoid problems when you dive.  The evening will include a tour of the Hospitals Hyperbaric Unit as well as the opportunity to see inside an actual  Recompression chamber.  Members will have the opportunity to ask questions from the staff throughout the presentation and light refreshments will be served.

 We will be meeting at the Dive Centre at 17:30 before heading up to Melbourne and car pooling is being arranged so if you need a lift contact the Dive Centre.  The evening promises to be very informative.  

MELBOURNE AQUARIUM DIVE

A dark flash from the corner of my mask…

A shadow on the sand, moves???

‘Is it Kelp?…Is it Kelp?’

My heartbeat is visible beneath my wetsuit.

The story about ‘Only me and my Dry Cleaner know how scared I was.’

Shark!!!

Every diver experiences, the adrenaline and excitement of the unexpected.

Perhaps that’s why we dive. 

Perhaps that’s why a dozen members of the dive club chose to spend a Sunday in January, at the Melbourne Aquarium, swimming with the sharks. 

Perhaps that’s why conversations in the car during the trip, centred around School Boy stories of heroic encounters with man eating monsters. 

I am glued to the bottom of the aquarium, Eyes bulging through my face mask, taking underwater photos of every fish I saw, Snapper big enough to break a surf rod,

Sharks within arms reach and tickling huge rays. 

That is why I dive.

 Rod ‘Rocket’.

Check out the Photo Gallery Page for more. . .

EWANS PONDS 2003

The Ewans Ponds club dive, organised for the Australia day weekend is now set in concrete as an annual event for the Geelong Dive Centre.  It’s a chance for us to get out and camp under the stars at the Blue Lake Holiday Park, Mount Gambier.

Three vehicles (the advance party) set out Thursday morning for the four hour trip from Geelong to select the suitable site for the tent Village to settle for the next four days.

After our three tents were erected we still had numerous hours of daylight left so we set off to Port Mc Donnell to see if the Cray’s we left there last year had grown and as shown in the picture there had been some adjustment to their size, this Cray is resting on a 100 cft. tank.

Day one ended with two more tents arriving taking the number up to five so far. With daytime temperatures in the high 30’s the evening was exactly right for sitting out on deck chairs and bragging about our Cray harvest.

Day two saw us waking up to another perfect day (who needs Queensland) and heading down the road to Cape Douglas for another day of snorkeling, fishing and diving  in the crystal clear water, amongst vividly coloured seaweed and kelp and rugged reef formations along the shore.  That evening we dragged ourselves back home to our tents to feast again on crays and wash it all down with a glass of ones favourite amber fluid (be it beer, wine or whiskey). Now this is what I call living life to the max!

After dinner and cleaning up the gear we headed back towards the Victorian Border to the Mt Gambier Speedway Track and enjoyed an evening of adrenalin and testosterone to top off another great day, while we waited for a few more members to arrive from across the border.  Driving along in the dark through the pine forest area was eerie with the headlights from approaching traffic cutting through what at first seemed to be a low lying mist, but was in fact smoke from the bushfires in Victoria which had been carried down to Mt Gambier by the winds.   The last members of the group arrived at approximately 1.30 am on Saturday morning to find a few of us still awake and putting up a tent in the dark for Trevor.  The final number was now close to thirty members.

Day three, the official trip to Ewans Ponds, a system of three spring fed fresh water ponds interconnected by narrow, shallow channels abundant with plant and fish life. Depth in the three ponds varies between 9 metres and 12 metres.  The ponds are situated approximately 18 kilometres south of Mt Gambier on private farmland and are classified as a national park.  These ponds can be explored with great effect, whether you choose to snorkel through them or to dive.  The pace set is entirely up to you.

The day was clear and HOT!  Getting the suits on was a bit of a struggle.  Sweaty bodies and rubber suits do not go well together!  Believe me; pulling rubber over wet calves and thighs is one hellava hard job.  The coolness of the water (13 DEGREES CELSIUS), ambient temperature was 42 degrees, made up for the hard work of gearing up and once through the first pond and the sediment, caused by the amount of traffic near the entrance to the pond, the clarity and magic of the view below took over as we wound our way slowly through to the last pond which contained schools of large fish and one huge freshwater Cray and other smaller ones.

The lack of flies in the car park this year made up for the invasion we experienced two years ago when you could easily have had a fly sandwich just by uttering a single word.  The temperature probably had a bit to do with it.  No fly in its right mind would be out at forty two degrees.

Once all members were out of the Ponds we headed down to Port McDonnell for lunch, fish and chips under the shade of the palm trees on the foreshore.  After lunch we went on to Cape Douglas for some snorkeling and spearfishing and general tomfoolery in the shallows with a blow-in dog who refused to give up on a toy which was being thrown around by Leigh, Ross, Matt, Naomi, Narelle and Jaime.  Much later in the day we drove back to camp for a cleanup, swim in the pool at the caravan park and then a barbeque of  meat, and fish freshly harvested  by Dave & Peter’s Fisheries.

Thanks to Gary, Martin and Lochie, we headed out to the Mt Gambier Indoor Go-Kart track which aroused some fierce competition amongst the males and one female group member.  A number of close rounds with a couple of the guys being sent to the sin bin for contact (who me?!) managed to dissipate some of the ROAD RAGE and we then went down to Umpherson’s Sinkhole to visit the very sleepy possums.

Day four, Sunday, dawned cloudy and damp, proved an ideal day for indoor recreation.  A group decision was made to visit the Princess Margaret Rose Caves and a local winery.

The caves are situated about 26 km's south of Mt Gambier just inside the Victorian border near the Glenelg River.  The caves are formed by limestone stalactites and stalagmites and are accessed by climbing down (68 look up) 70 steps and then entering the main chamber.  We saw some fantastic formations one of which is called the Wedding Cake because it closely resembles a beautifully decorated, multi tiered cake.  The use of effective lighting greatly enhances the features in the caves and at one point the lack of lights (deliberate) made us thank God for electricity.  Numerous intriguingly shaped nodes arising from the ground are inspiring enough to warrant a return visit in the future.

The next time those lights go out we’ll be ready.  (Ticket prices reasonable $8 Adults, $4 Kids or $16/family).  Check it out.

On the way back we stopped at the Haig Winery where the owner kindly relieved us of what remained in our wallets in exchange for some interesting conversation and some scrumptious bottles of his specialty wines. 

Some of us retired back to the tent village while some of the more energetic, foolhardy members decided on some Sunday Afternoon beach four wheel driving at Cape Douglas. A couple of vehicles (no names, no pack drill) required rescuing and Gary found an innovative use for a fin.  It can be used to dig a vehicle trapped in beach sand very effectively.  Obviously the Mares Volo should NEVER be used for this purpose but it may have done the job a lot quicker!

Sunday evening arrived all too quickly and we decided to drive down to the Mt Gambier CBD area and enjoy a meal at Macs Hotel (a grand old building) in one of the main streets.  With full stomachs and feeling very mellow we drove back to the camp site and sat around in a circle under a light, covered by blankets (no fires allowed) and told some jokes.  Some very good, some very bad but all worth laughing at till our cheeks hurt.  We played some music, not always to everyone’s taste (I can’t understand why not everybody likes Neil Young?) and waited for the Night Divers to return from Ewans Ponds.

The intrepid gang of three Ross, Matt and Leigh, headed off after tea at the hotel for a final dive at the ponds. Returning from their night dive with awe-inspiring reports of the incredible clarity of the water and being able to see the stars and clouds from 15 metres underwater, likened more to a sense of flying than diving.  The euphoria of the dive experience was dampened by the discovery that using your headlights whilst gearing up before and removing gear after the dive is not taken kindly by ones car battery and that Rav 4’s can be pushed for two metres.......... WITH THE HANDBRAKE ON!!!   

Final day, Monday, camp was broken down with excessive use of water pistols/cannons helping to alleviate the depressed feelings of some group members about the return trip home.  Over exuberance in some members resulted in an unexpected injury with someone running into a pole and falling down a step to avoid being blasted by a water cannon (where’s Leigh?).  Lunch at KFC in Mt Gambier on the way home and then the long trip back home with a stop at the Allansford Cheese World for one of their famous milkshakes signaled the end of another good trip away.

Overall rating of the trip:  10 out of 10.  An excellently filled weekend, with enough activities
and not to rigidly structured, which boosted camaraderie amongst club members. 

Shortcomings:  The weekend wasn’t long enough! (Never is!)

To do list:  Keep weekend clear for next Australia Day weekend 2004.

Other experiences and urban tales (The Red Jocks Award) can only be related verbally in the privacy of club rooms. Photographic and video evidence is available for viewing at club rooms.

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