Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 March 2004 04:26:23
I went to a friends Trav and Karly's place last night for dinner, stayed the night and went out with Trav on his boat this morning. It's not really his boat, he is a marine biologist and tour operator at Sea-All, a charter boat that takes groups out into Port Phillip Bay to snorkel with seals and (if you're lucky) dolphins.
The conditions were perfect. It's Autumn now, but this week it seems that summer is having its last little fling - today is 25 deg c, bright blue sky, water flat and clear. We took off from Queenscliff about 10am with a group of year 10 Outdoor Ed students. Sea-All provides full-length wetsuits, snorkels, snacks, drinks, sunscreen and educational material to the teachers - they are very popular this time of year with school groups, over summer they are chockablock with tourists.
And I understand why. The boat took us out into the Bay to Pope's eye, apparently one of the world's smallest marine sanctuaries, and the snorkelling there is fantastic - we saw many coloured sponges and algae, sea-stars, jellies (unusual this far south) and fish galore. Then we took off to Chinaman's Hat, where a colony of Australian fur seals live. The young ones play and dance in the water, and we snorkelled right with them (although not close enough for them to bite, which Trav said happens occasionally).
Then we go looking for dolphins. The boat just drives around until it finds some, or hears on the grapevine where a pod is swimming. They run ropes out the back of the boat that people cling to, then they run into what they hope is the path of the pod, and if you're lucky the dolphins swim right through the group of people. We weren't quite so lucky today. We did find dolphins, but it was a small pod and they didn't want to play, diving deep whenever they came near us.
Awesome fun, educational, and the whole atmosphere is alluring, the "call of the sea" and that sort of thing. Hats off to Trav and the rest of the crew at Sea-All. I'm definitely going to go out with him again, next time I'll take Elicia along (she comes back tonight!)
PS I just rang the Bendigo guy, we should know tomorrow whether we can get a loan through them or not *praying hard*. He said the chances were "um... well... I guess, um... I'd say Very Good!", which I decided to take as encouraging.