Continuing my travels North up the Australian East coast, I stopped off to dive at Southwest Rocks. This was my Northward point of my epic road trip in Australia, from then on it would be downward towards Tasmania. The reason I made the 500k trip North for the sole purpose of diving the site known as Fish Rock Cave.
Southwest Rocks is a small town by the sea, about 4.5 hrs on the highway from Sydney, though I made my way there over several days on the back roads. There is a great atmosphere in the village, lots of boats, lots of surfers, but not a lot of divers!
I heard about this place when a friend went there on recommendation and wouldn’t stop going on about it since. “Have you heard of Southwest rocks?” “you need to go!”..
So I couldn’t not include it as part of this adventure down under!
We had an early start, I drove about 45 mins from my glorious free camp with the wildlife at Hat Head, and arrived at Southwest Rocks Dive Centre near enough 7:30 am. Quick check of cert cards etc. Then I set up my gear and loaded it onto the waiting boat. Once everyone was ready, we were off following the trailered dive boat down to the boat ramp. Park up, jump onboard, brief done then out of a small inlet and over a rough sand break, then about 20 mins at good speed to the Rocks.
Fish Rock looks pretty ordinary from the surface, out there on its own, just your usual rock island off the coast… But slip under the surface, and all changes!
We descended near the wall as it dropped off to about 15m, then followed this along to the top of a small canyon that bottomed out at about 30m. Looking down and along this trench we saw what we had all come to find, grey nurse sharks! About 20 of them layered through the water column, slowly swimming along the walls, or seeming to suspend almost motionless in the slight water movement. Absolutely beautiful animals! We hugged the wall and slowly contoured around its perimeter, observing them, trying to catch a picture when they circled close. The visibility was good, the water was blue so the full scale of the congregating fish was very apparent.
The rest of the dive we spent coming around from the foot of the canyon back to the boat, called the Gardens. Looking out into the blue in the hope of spotting a rare hammer head. Our guide spotted one in the distance, and I briefly saw something flicker off out there. But never got a conclusive sight. The search continues for hammer heads!
Back on board, we were given the soup menu to choose from (something I’ve had on all my dives here in Australia that I’ve had nowhere else in the world so far is that after your dive someone onboard gets out this big box of instant soup and lists off a selection of about 20 flavours! Is this an Aussi thing? Let me know!)
Our next dive was through the Cave. This started at the head of the canyon with the sharks, so we got to swim past them again on the way! Just as cool 2nd time around! We descended to the floor and there was the cave entrance.
Now I’m not a cave diver. I would love to one day explore the caves of Florida and Mexico in full cave fashion. As standard divers without redundant gear, entering any environment that blocks access to the surface in an emergency is a bad idea. This was no different. The risk factor for this dive was considerably higher than on other dives. Some of the risk was mitigated however through making sure we all had plenty of air remaining to dive through the cave, and knowing that the cave was a single swim through with an ascent midway of about 5m and without any off shoots to get lost down. So all in all this was not a cave to get lost forever inside.
The inside of the cave was crusted with 100s of species of sponge and soft corals and anemones. Sea fans branched out into the surge flow, urchins clustered in the rocks on the floor, wobbegong sharks lay hidden waiting for food to pass by. Deeper in we went until we lost sight of the light glow from the entrance. Then we ascended a few meters through small clouds of fish and along again until we saw light again at the exit. We emerged through a hanging garden of fan corals and fish which I cant identify with my north atlantic eyes.
I was lucky to have done these dives, I had made it there just before the weather turned poor. The next day was blown out and the days after too!
And what dives they were! Now I will be joining my friend in saying “have you heard of Southwest Rocks?!”
Have you?
Thank you for reading! Major mile stone reached, there are now 10 followers! Lets keep growing, remember to like and follow!
Fun Once Its Done 
Great post😀
LikeLike
I enjoy reading your posts! Enjoying the thoughts of getting lost in an underwater cave a bit less. Exciting stuff!
LikeLike