Adventuring South West Rocks with Jake

On the 8th november myself and 11 others headed up to South West Rocks. The first night we headed down to the Seabreeze and had ourselves some dinner along with the staple drink of beer, as we were walking back we happened to look at what is known as the bar, which is basically a man made entrance to this river, to our horror the swell was smashing over the bar, worried that we weren’t going to get out we headed back to the dive shop and prayed to the weather gods that we could get out. In the morning we woke to discover our prayer had been answered – the forecasted wind hadn’t arrived and the bar was looking good!

 

Unfortunately some beef nachos from the evening before didn’t agree with me so I waved goodbye and then rested. A couple of hours later the guys all came back, the guys who went through the cave loved it! They also mentioned that there were sharks out in the gutter and they were a bit friendlier than the ones we get down south, telling me they were coming within 1-2m of some people. The guys washed their gear and joined me for lunch, by now I’d managed to hold down one piece of toast and a few glasses of water so I was feeling pretty good. We decided we’d go and try the country club for dinner and it was one of the best all you can eat dinners I’ve had, the food was amazing and the seafood was just fantastic. As we were eating dinner we looked out the window and massive storm clouds were coming in, again we were all secretly worried but James decided that nope, tomorrow’s weather was going to be fine and we’ll get out.

The next morning it seemed like James’ positive attitude had persuaded whatever is in charge of the weather that it was a good day to dive, as we headed out there was thousands of mutton birds hanging around the entrance to the river which was pretty cool to see. As we got out to Fish Rock it got a bit choppy with the southerly wind the moorings are right in the way of the wind. We moored up and jumped in. We descended down the line and swam towards the cave, there were sharks the whole way round and they were pretty inquisitive. As we got in the cave, my dive buddy and I headed in last, there was a massive bull ray right at the bottom of the chimney, then all of a sudden a wobbegong decided it’s best place to sit was right in the chimney, with one of our torches blown, myself and my buddy decided to turn around and head out of the cave, as we got to the end the DM came back out and I told him we would go round and play in the shark gutters. So off me and my buddy went and played with the sharks for a while before ascending and getting back on the boat.
On the second dive we went through the cave. The cave is awesome! When you get into the no light zone you feel a real sensation of almost not being underwater, especially when you turn your torch off and just sit in the dark, you almost forget where you are, we headed through the rest of the cave and had a play in the bubble cave, as we got to the end of the cave there weren’t any sharks but there was plenty of other life around. After stopping outside the cave and checking our air the DM took us down deeper and around the corner to do the drift around to what is known as the aquarium. Aptly named you head into the aquarium and there are thousands of fish and if your luck even some pelagic fish, that day a big school of kingfish swam straight past us! As we came around the corner it was unfortunately time to ascend.
The trip to South West rocks was awesome, I’d like to thank everyone who made the weekend as fantastic as it was. I’d recommend anyone to go up to South West Rocks and dive there, the whole team is extremely friendly and very professional, thank you to everyone for an awesome weekend! If you are keen let us know and we will organise another trip for more adventures!