For Labour Day weekend, we decided to do something a bit different. The club haven’t ever taken the boat down to Augusta, so we decided to head down and check out the diving!
Friday 2nd March
We traveled down to Augusta with Chromodoris in tow, the journey took around 5 hours and took in a good few bakeries but we arrived about 9pm. The club had booked up a 12-person Air BnB which was massive, with a big garage to hang wet gear, a decent sized garden and al fresco area and plenty space to park cars and boat.
Saturday 3rd March
Due to a windy forecast we decided to make a respectable start and got to the new Augusta boat ramp just before 8am after a decent feed of bacon and egg rolls. The President seems to be making a name for himself as a breakfast chef these days! The new ramp/marina there is pretty nice and sheltered and has a few public pens, so we planned to just moor the boat up for the next couple of days. Once we got out of the harbor we motored out to the Alouarn Islands at the Southwest of Flinders Bay. It was a bit of an unfortunate combination of SW swell and SE wind and after trying a few spots we moored up comfortably behind St Alouarn Island, the largest in the small island group. Our dive wasn’t too bad and we found some pretty interesting stuff towards the end including a big wobbegong under an overhang and came up in the middle of a massive school of buffalo bream…however due to some dodgy navigation we had a decent surface swim of around 120m to get back to the boat. After heading back to the house for lunch, some of the softer divers went to check out a winery or two, meanwhile the tougher individuals were back for more! The second dive was more interesting – even if we did end up in more or less the same spot due to the weather conditions. The terrain was mostly short kelp bottoming out at around 12m, with regular limestone bommies and overhangs full of stuff like cuttlefish, occies, harlequin fish, plus lots of wrasse and the odd nudibranch. This time ‘our’ navigation was spot on and we ended up right back under the boat (thanks Volker!). We headed back to the house to chill and have a beer or two, and enjoyed an authentic Italian spag bol cooked by Alessandra.
Sunday 4th March
We braved the weather conditions even earlier this morning, and were under way by 7.30am to hopefully get out before the wind was up. After trying for Seal Island (some old mate at the marina had told us it was a good spot for ‘big pelagics’) and a few other spots in the lee of smaller islands, the only sheltered spot we could find was right back near where we’d been yesterday. The dive still produced though – nice vis, some big Port Jacksons, a large cuttlefish tried to eat my torch, and we even had a family of dolphins with a calf check us out whilst underwater. After grabbing some pies/coffee/vanilla slice at the Augusta Bakery (worth a visit!). We packed tanks and gear onto the boat and headed for a quick trip up to scenic Hamelin Bay. The wooden boat ramp was a bit interesting and the car park pretty full, but we found a spot and Volker held the boat steady while we waded into the water and climbed aboard. Hamelin Bay was in a perfect location as far as the swell and wind, so we moored just North of Hamelin Island in around 6m. The water was crystal clear and some people snorkelled while others strapped on tanks and went looking for crayfish. A couple of the massive stingrays that Hamelin Bay is famous for were doing laps under the boat and were curious enough to come flapping right up to us. Considering how shallow the dive was there were some really fun swim-throughs, caves and canyons, and Phill and I managed to bag 3 decent sized crayfish in one of the caverns. Unfortunately I’d lost my catch bag by this time – must have come off in one of the tighter swim-throughs. We had to figure out some teamwork where I donated my gloves to Phill meaning he could hold the crays that I’d looped and we managed to get em all! Getting the boat back onto the trailer was a bit tricky due to a bit of a side-wind, but Volker’s skills got us there on the 3rd attempt. I decided I’d remove the bung whilst we were on the ramp…but didn’t realise there were 3 or 4 people sleeping on the sand underneath it to get out of the sun and they weren’t too impressed when all our bilge water started flooding through the wooden slats above them hahahah! We then headed back to the house for BBQ crays for dinner which wasn’t too shabby.
Monday 5th March
Time to head home, but not before stopping in past Dunsborough for a cheeky dive on the ex-HMAS Swan as we couldn’t resist the perfect conditions (why couldn’t it have been like this over the last 2 days?!). A super-fast trip out and back and as usual an interesting look around the Swan…even found the big wobbegong who’d been absent or hiding on our last visit in January. The traffic was pretty awful for parts of the journey back…but more pies and coffee were had so no big problems.
Thanks heaps to everyone who came on the trip and it was great that everyone chipped in to lend a hand with cooking, loading/unloading gear, picking up tanks and coffees etc etc…makes life so much easier. Special thanks to Brian for sorting the accommodation, Gemma for doing the big food shop and of course Volker for skippering like a boss. Great trip and I think we’ll be back in the not too distant future!
