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CamperVan Gypsies DownUnder

The Great Barrier Reef

Our 78 Toyota HiAce van. We've had three of 'em! In tropical north Queensland we made our headquarters in the bustling town of Cairns.

On one of our trips we decided to take the Seastar II out to Hastings reef on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef. The Captain, Ray Brooker, had owned and operated charter vessels in Cairns since 1956. The Seastar II was an old timer, with rust stains and well-worn carpets , but she immediately felt like home out on the water. The first thing Ray and the friendly crew said to us was that "there's hot coffee and tea in the galley, help yourself."

We left Marlin Jetty in Cairns at 7:00 am in the cool of a fine tropical morning. Another beaut of a day! There were eighteen of us on the trip, mainly Australians and New Zealanders.

After everyone had a cup of tea or coffee and had settled down the crew asked us to gather on the deck topside. They introduced themselves as Derek, "Captain Fab" and Mark and gave us simple instructions in snorkelling with lots of fun and joking thrown in. These guys were good. I don’t know what they did when they weren’t taking tourists on snorkelling trips but they missed their calling by not getting on the Ed Sullivan show. (Oops – showing my age… they probably weren’t even born when I was watching good old Ed! And in Canada, no less! Maybe they could get on the reruns.)

For example, here’s what Mark told us about getting into the water: "We feed the sharks first, get them into a feeding frenzy, throw the people in, and wait five minutes. Then we get in!"

What followed next could be called the "mask and snorkel follies." They showed us how to select a good mask by placing it on the face without the strap and sucking in through the nose to see if it sticks in place. Mark described how the strap is simply to keep the mask in place and they can tell when people wear them too tight because they have red rings around their faces and bulging, red eyeballs when they take them off. I didn’t mention that I’ve seen people looking like that who haven’t gone anywhere near mask and snorkel, but, rather, enjoyed a nasty encounter with the contents of a bottle of Baby Duck. Not that I’ve ever witnessed any happy encounters with that stuff.

"Captain Fab" cautioned us against doing what someone had tried once; stowing food in our swim gear in order to feed the fish. He handed around 8X10 photos of sharks and a fish they fondly referred to as Wally, the seventy pound maori wrasse. "You don't want to stow any food in your shorts and have one of these fellows come up for a bite," he cautioned as he manoeuvred the photo of a white-tipped reef shark dangerously close to his private parts. Wow, I had never thought of that one! I quietly made a mental note to myself, “When looking for a place to carry sandwich, DO NOT stow lunch in shorts.” It seems like a bad idea in general, but in shark-infested waters you could lose a lot more than your ham and cheese! And what shark couldn’t resist seconds!

The first sign Hastings Reef was a white line of surf on the horizon, breaking against the coral on the seaward side. Captain Ray made his way through deeper channels in the coral, as he had for the past thirty plus years, to a perfect spot in a pocket of deep water close to coral bolmies, or outcrops, and underwater canyons. The water was like translucent, blue liquid glass and we could clearly see the coral twenty or thirty feet below.

As soon as we arrived the Captain brought out a couple of loaves of white bread and threw them out to a group of fish which were quickly collecting near the ladder. The water was suddenly alive with fish. This was like a wet-dream for your average slack-liner from Canada. There were more species of fish milling around our boat than the entire fish population off the West Coast. The crew members called out their names: sweetlips, sergeant major… and then two Russian submarines masquerading as fish appeared. “Hump-headed maori wrasse,” I called out loudly to disperse the dark shadows of ignorance surrounding my fellow adventurers. Everyone thought it was just Yep, this is Wally. He's a fish. one of the crew. The larger one was Wally and he’d brought along a buddy. Wally had been showing up regularly for over eight years at that time, it turns out. Probably put on about 200 kilos during that time. Went from a small Volkswagen to a respectable family size fish.

And then a sleek lightning-strike of a fish, over a meter in length, suddenly appeared and the Captain threw him a whole bait fish. He grabbed it in very long jaws studded with hypodermic teeth and immediately took off. A second later he was at the surface, and then in the air, skipping along on the water at an amazing speed, the lower part of his tail propelling him like an outboard motor. It was spectacular! "Alligator gar," Captain Ray said, "the others are trying to take his fish away." The gar went underwater for a brief instance and then it was at the surface again, planing along on top of the water like a miniature hydrofoil.

Then we heard a story about a couple of people in a small boat who were out fishing when, out of nowhere, an alligator gar came whizzing along and impaled himself into the neck of one of the fishermen. I winced. Needless to say the fellow died! Probably slowly. Wow! I was beginning to reconsider the safety of this entire venture. Sharks, Wally and now this living piscine projectile from the deep. Holy Mackerel, I’ll never use your name in vain again!

Captain Ray took us on a snorkeling tour of the area. There are deep blue holes and canyons and caves amongst the coral bolmies and reefs that he guided us along. We floated above a jutting terrain of elkhorn coral, brain coral, and sharp corals like broken glass... He showed us several giant clams with open shells and blue and green mantles exposed. "Just one piece of coral or an object dropped onto the flesh would kill the clam in only a few hours." he explained. Lucky I wasn’t carrying a sandwich in my swimsuit, it could have fallen out.

The really frightening thing is that the giant clams are in big trouble. Mainly from poaching. Asian fisherman, often in leaky, old tubs, come to the Great Barrier reef repeatedly to load up with the sweet white meat from the huge clams. If they get caught they just get sent back to their home country. The boats are confiscated but apparently the profits from giant clams make the risk worthwhile. The crews just get hold of another boat and head back for clams once again.

Down below, fish were all around us, going about their business, sometimes coming close to examine our outstretched hands. There were many species of angel fish, butterfly fish, parrot fish... The parrot fish nibbled at the coral and occasionally took a bite, making a crunch underwater as if biting into a crisp apple. Schools of blue puller fish scintillated like stars of blue in the curtains of sunlit water just below the surface.

With only a short break we stayed in the water for almost two hours. Our ten year old, who was afraid of the reef five years ago, was keeping up with the captain’s deep dives this time and didn’t want to leave. Time flew, however, and soon it was time to go. The trip back took two and a half hours. On the way back we relaxed and sun-bathed on the deck, looked at photo albums of past trips, and browsed through fish books looking at pictures of Russian submarines until we arrived in Cairns as the sun was setting.

The end, but not really!

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