Diving at Shelly Beach near Manly in Sydney

It'd been over 5 months since my last dive so was great to get underwater again and take a look around at the Shelly Beach area, about 30 mins North East of Sydney.

I was diving with a mate Paul and through the guys at Pro Dive Manly. The team at Pro Dive are cool guys with a lot of experience and a good set-up, our Divemaster Rob was open to ideas of what we wanted out of the dives and as we only had a small group of four we didn't have to wait around for too long.

Given Shelly Beach is a marine reserve (no fishing allowed) the sealife seemed larger and more mature than usual. On dive one we saw a massive Cuttlefish that took a liking to my mask (the Divemaster seemed to think they like bright colours and mines purple and orange) and swam slowly toward me like playing chicken getting very close before I moved to avoid a collision - it's eyes we're amazing, we definitely had a moment! Apparently they have a strong jaw and can grab onto things quite quickly and aggressively, I was right to move away I guess.

On dive two we saw a massive Flathead, I didn't know they got that big, this one was about a metre long and would've tasted brilliant I'm sure.

The visibility was generally good and the bottom temperature a mild 18 degrees considering it's winter in Australia now. It did get cold about 15 mins into the second 45 min dive when we all wished we had dry suits on!

I'll definitely dive with Pro Dive again, hopefully Long Reef and soon!

Cheers
Tim

My Worthy Watch blog

Over the past few months I've been watching a lot of DVD's at home. I've always enjoyed films but more recently have almost become addicted. We have a local DVD rental store just a few minutes walk from home, who know us well enough now not to have to ask for a card or name - they don't even expect us to pay at the time and generally say 'just bring the money next time if you don't have it on you'!

Also, given Mel (my wife) is heavily pregnant we don't spend as much time socialising or 'going out' as we used to which is all part of the nesting process of having a child (so I'm told).

Anyway, I've started a new blog to document the films I'm watching and will give my own unprofessional and potentially useless view on them. I've added a ratings module (which kind of works) so anyone can rate the film if they've seen it too and a comments module to write personal comments on the film or my blog post.

http://worthywatch.blogspot.com/

Cheers
Tim