Sunshine Coast

Trip Start Mar 28, 2009

Trip End Jun 04, 2009

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Caravan Park

Flag of Australia Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia
Wednesday, May 13, 2009

We spent a beach day and did some diving from the Sunshine Coast, Mooloolaba in Queensland. On Wednesday (May 13), we finally had a good weather beach day, and Sandi was very happy. On Thursday we dove the HMAS Brisbane wreck and the local aquarium (Underwater World) Shark Tank. Yes, really, we scuba dove in an aquarium.

The HMAS Brisbane was a 440-ft long missle destroyer, built in the US in 1967. She served in the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. The ship was decommissioned in 2001 and sunk for wreck dives off the coast. The first dive we circled the ship and the second dive we swam through the boiler room, engine room, gallies, etc. It was impressive. In 4 years, the ship has quickly started turning into a reef, and we saw barracuda, octopus, angel fish, lion fish.

After that we dove in the 3.5-meter deep shark tank at the local aquarium. We thought it would be cheesy, but it was actually impressive! We dropped into the tank right next to some huge rays (~3 meters across). We were both afraid we would fall on them and go out Steve Irwin-style. There were also huge nurse sharks (maybe 4 m long), tiger sharks, etc. We have some photos of the shark tank but can't open them right now off of the CD. We'll post them soon.

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