Friday 19th April
The weekend didn’t look like it was getting off to the best start, with strong winds and rain storms on the drive down to Albany. Fortunately skipper Dylan made a good choice by driving Chromodoris down the day before and met us at the Hostel. I arrived at the hostel to be met with ice and hail lying all over the ground, with the conditions freezing cold – hopefully it would warm up! We were booked into the 1849 Backpackers, a great spot with very welcoming hosts, big clean rooms and renowned for FREE all-you-can-eat pancakes in the kitchen for breakfast. The group walked down to Due South on the foreshore for dinner – the cheeseburgers come highly recommended – before returning to the hostel to check over all gear for the morning’s diving.
Saturday 20th April
We rose early for the famous pancakes at the backpackers, which the staff were good enough to get up at 6am to make for us before heading out. Chromodoris was launched at 0630 and parked in a pen at the marina which allowed easy access for us to hop on and off the boat. Today was all about diving the exHMAS Perth. Scuttled in 2001 for diving, the 133m-long former Australian Navy boat still has many of its original features including a large gun on the aft deck. It’s similar to the exHMAS Swan at Dunsborough in many ways, but there seems to be more in the way of soft corals, sponges and more life on the Perth (and way worse vis!).
Despite the 5m swell and strong South Westerlies we were well protected at the wreck site, about 2km North of the historic whaling station in Frenchman Bay. We ran the day as double dives with two groups, swapping over at lunchtime which worked well. Annoyingly, the cover plate fell off my rebreather before my first dive; Dylan and I did a search pattern when we got to the bottom at around 35 metres, but the ocean floor was very silty and we were both a bit narked so either I swam over the top of it and missed it, or (more likely) it plummeted like a stone and buried itself 3 feet deep into the silt. Disintegrating rebreathers aside, we had a great couple of dives on the wreck. Lots of life was present, including a big 3m wobbegong, blue gropers, shoals of smaller fish, and heaps of soft corals. Vis was around 10m at the top but down to 3m lower down e.g. at the gun.
In the evening some keen beans went for a night dive at Middleton Beach where by all accounts the surge and vis conditions weren’t amazing but were made up for by some weedy sea dragons. We grabbed some dinner at Due South again as the food was good and big portions for hungry divers! Washed down with some cans of the finest bush chook back at the hostel.
Sunday 21st April
After pancake time we headed out to Michaelmas Island – the Northern one of two large islands that sit in the entrance to Frenchman Bay. First up we tried to find the wreck of the Cheynes III – a whaling ship that used to belong to the Albany whaling station. However we actually dropped in on a series of rocky bommies which, whilst having a small amount of life around them, didn’t make for a hugely satisfying dive when coupled with a good bit of surge. The second dive, at Gurney Rock, was far better. This site is famous for a big rock that constantly moves under the exertion of the swell to make a strange creaking noise that can be heard underwater. A large number of cracks, caverns and swim-throughs provided an interesting dive, with plenty of fish life including a massive port Jackson shark and large school of decent sized Samson fish.
The afternoon group gave the Cheynes III site a miss due to the surgey conditions and opted for Cables (great choice!) plus Gurney Rock. In the afternoon we took a wander up around the War Memorial park on the hill above Albany. Great place to wander round throug h the trees for a couple of hours with amazing views of the bay, plus some nicely maintained relics from the wartime era. Someone who will remain nameless (but lets say would have lived up to his surname) managed to drop the keys for the club Landcruiser, but luckily a member of the public had found them and handed them in to the museum by the time we realised they were missing! A night dive at Middleton Beach (better conditions than last night) was followed up by the third trip to Due South in a row.
Monday 22nd April
Due to Tobin, Brian, Harv, Paige and Craig having other commitments/sinus problems, we managed to get everyone on one boat which enabled us to make a more relaxed start after stuffing in some extra pancakes at the backpackers. We headed out toward Breaksea Island with the aim of diving two sites on the Northern side where we’d get protection from the swell. On the way out we noticed an orange smoke flare directly ahead of us, between the two islands; quickly followed by another. A small boat had lost power and the guy had the engine cover off trying to get it to re-start. He’d been trying to hail Albany Sea Rescue but his radio wasn’t set up properly and was unable to contact them, plus his position tucked in between the islands meant his flare wasn’t visible to anyone – UWAUC to the rescue! We notified the Sea Rescue boat to come give him a tow back to port, and in the meantime hitched him to the back of Doris and towed him along to our dive site while we got ready to dive. Luckily the Sea Rescue boat is ridiculously quick and arrived to tow him home within about 10 minutes, so all ended well.
The first dive was at a site called Cables, so called due to a large number of old cables underwater to supply electricity and communications to the lighthouse on top of Breaksea Island. Visibility was pretty decent and we enjoyed exploring the massive granite boulders and all the clefts, swim-throughs and caverns around the site. The area is reasonably compact but stuffed with life – plate corals, small gorgonians and sponges plus heaps of fish including sweep, foxfish, blue devils, buffalo bream, bullseye, blue groper, butterfly fish and some good size cuttlefish. During surface interval we took a close look at the colony of New Zealand fur seals at Seal Cove, who’d come back after their morning fishing session and were sunbathing on the rocks.
We then began our second dive, joined by some of the friendlier seals underwater. They’re pretty interested if you start clowning around and zip past very close – it’s almost tempting to try giving one a pat until you see the size of the teeth! Underwater, Seal Cove is a shallow kelp-filled bowl with a series of large granite walls and shelves. Volker and I carried on East of the seal colony and a little deeper where there was very good visibility and a heap of fish life – at one point we were lying on our backs watching a school of several thousand salmon passing overhead. Where the reef met the sand at around 25 metres was the wreck of what looked like an old rowing boat – maybe at one time had been a supply boat for the lighthouse back in the days when it would have been manned. We decided it would be too much to eat at the same place 4 nights in a row, so we ordered pizza instead which was surprisingly decent…and accompanied by some fine port.
Tuesday 23rd April
We weren’t quite ready to head home just yet, so the remaining crew drove around to Little Beach just to the South of Two Peoples Bay, 30 mins East of Albany. It’s an incredibly scenic spot, even if the walk down to the beach (and back up after!) carrying upwards of 60kg of dive gear detracted slightly. We entered the water from the sand, then dived to the left around a large granite outcrop with reefs projecting out below. Really fun dive with big schools of herring, horseshoe leatherjackets, big dusky morwongs, wrasse, scalyfin, seacarp and one very big cuttlefish towards the end. After that it was time to pack up and head up the road.
For me, this was definitely one of the best trips we’ve done over the last couple of years – a big part of it being the great crew we had along - and it makes life so much easier when everyone is happy to chip in to do jobs and just generally look after each other. Special thanks go to Dylan for driving Doris down and back and skippering, plus to Volker as part two of the skippering team and fountain of local Albany knowledge on where and when the best dives were to be had according to conditions. Cheers everyone, here’s to the next trip!!
