Majestic Randez-Vous
Saturday, May 28th, 2005The way to Byron Bay is beautiful. The hills make place to meadows, and the eucaliptuses change into endless fields of sugar canes. The last 30 kilometres are going along the beach, so you can see the ocean in one side, and the sugar cane fields on the other. The weather also changed dramatically: some 500 or 600 kilometres north of Sydney, it is no longer autumn. Now we are in deep summer, with temperatures over 25 degrees, blue sky, and very strong sun.
Byron Bay is the easternmost point of the australian mainland. It is a small beachtown, which lives around the sea at the day and around the parties at the night. We arrived at the afternoon, so after finding an accomodation and preparing a dinner (we usually buy food at the supermarket and cook for ourselves) we went straight to a party at one bar. The place was full of girls, and I’ve never seen such a blond concentration in my life. To make things even better, the normal reaction of a girl who realizes we come from Israel is something like: “How Exotic”.
My diving course paid itself completely. I did today a dive (my first dive in Australia!). It was at Julian Rocks, a small marine reserve some 2.5 kilometres off the Byron shore. We arrived there on a small engine boat (which was fun by itself - looking at the lighthouse from the sea) and started to dive.
This diving site is regarded special because in this point the northern current and the southern current meet. This creates a mixture of many types of fish: we’ve seen the large cold-water fish, and some smaller colorful tropical fish. But fish were not the story. The dive started with a giant turtle that was wandering around about 7 meters below the sea level (they are here in vast amounts; it also ended with a turtle). Than there were some Wobigong Sharks (small, flat, and harmless sand sharks) and one Leopard Shark (same same, only that it’s skin is all spotted, like a Leopard fur). At our maximum depth, 18 meters, we went into an opening or an underwater cave. Our guide went inside, and a moment later it appeared, majestically swimming out of the cave - the Grey Nurse Shark.
The Grey Nurse Shark is a big shark (the one we saw was at least two, probably three meters long) which is very rare - it is actually an endangered animal, and the only reson that Julian Rocks were declared a natural reserve is because this is one of the rare places in which, one month only every year, the Grey Sharks can be seen (they come here to breed). It is not dangerous to man, though it does look very scary, especially when you float at the entrance of its cave 18 meters deep and it passes less than a meter from you (swimming slowly and totally ignoring you). It was a VERY nice sight.
I must have been excited, because I consumed a lot of air there. Soon after that, I had to come up and my dive lasted only 30 minutes (not including the way up) - but it was full of sharks and turtles, so it was very nice.
I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do tomorrow. I can move to Queensland (either Brisbane or Surfers-Paradise), I can stay at Byron and cath some sea. or I can make a nice hike at one of the inland rainforest reserves here - I will probably see to it tomorrow morning, depends on how much fun tonight’s party will be!
