Learning to Dive in Terrigal

Learning to Dive in Terrigal Terrigal, Australia

Terrigal, Australia

Spent the last week doing a diving course in Terrigal with Les and Fran at the Terrigal Dive centre. They are great and each day consisted of half a day of lectures and half a day of diving. In all I go five logged dives with about 6 hours in total in the water. Superb. We were given loads of time to practice and assimilate the information. Being in a group of only 3 learners also meant a lot of time was spent with us individually. So I am now a fully qualified diver! Most of the diving is done in the Terrigal haven in up to 9 meters of water. The centre is right on the waters edge. You do a short waddle to the beach past a cafe full of bemused (amused?) diners. The water is beautifully clear and every day we saw great amounts of fish, and a faithful Blue Grouper. We even caught a glimpse of a big Ray. One of the others on the course nearly put his hand on a stingray during one dive; I nearly used up all my air laughing. I laughed so hard I managed to fill my mask with water. The day of our qualifying dive we went out about half a mile into the ocean and dove down to about 18 metres for about 45 minutes. On the way down one of the group couldn’t equalise properly and got a ‘middle ear barotrauma’, his mask filled with blood and he had to come up. Once he was safely on the boat we continued for a magical trip. We saw so much sea life, although I will admit that I was a little scared and it took me a while to get calm. I think the dawning realisation I was a kilometre out to sea under water. But once I had calmed down it was amazing, we even got to see a sea turtle just at our edge of vision. Goregous. My next mission is to find some dolphins.