Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

The night is one tough slaughter. The first alcoholic corpses can be admired at eight o’clock. I mutate into an animal film maker. The air conditioning fails in the room. Sleeping in a sauna. There’s a heavy swell in the morning, especially on land. As soon as I’m on the Tusa5, our diving boat, it’s fine again. The swell seems to counteract my fluctuations antiphasically.

I lost my PADI licence on the trip. No problem, says the booking agent, they can find your licence online via PADI. What he doesn’t say is that I would have had to send the provisional licence to PADI first. Consequence: I’m only allowed to do introductory dives without a licence. Lower, shorter, only two instead of three but at least another 50$ more expensive.

The weather is good today. Cairns has had 9 days of sunshine since New Year’s Eve. Today is the tenth. Visibility under water is good – says the instructor. But I’m a spoilt snot. 10 to 15 metres is nothing for me, I want 50 metres again like in Fiji. I want more corals, big sharks, giant perch, moray eels, more colours and at least 10 times more fish.

There is none of that. I pay almost as much for 70 minutes underwater as I did for my entire open water diving course in Fiji. Okay, the lunch was good and the blue jellyfish suits were a real hoot for the die-hard Teletubbie fan. Apart from that? An annoying diving instructor who keeps us on a 1.5 metre line but breaks corals himself a few times because he thinks diving backwards is cool. He’s constantly fiddling with my BCD, with the result that I crash into coral twice.

Nice? Yes, but still. But expensive as hell. In the evening I still have exactly $45 in my wallet. I call the mechanic in Cardwell. Good news: the V-belts are there. Bad news: the electronic V-belt control is also faulty, there’s no such thing anywhere in Queensland. Flown in from Sydney. It only takes 3 days and costs a whopping $450. My head bangs on the booking agent’s desk.

Flying foxes fly in masses over Cairns. Together with the Art Deco buildings, I feel like I’m in Gotham City. Even my mood matches: dark black.