Diving HMAS Adelaide
Trip Start
Jan 12, 2006
1
231
232
Trip End
Ongoing
What I did
Ship wreck diving HMAS Adelaide and surfing Shelly Beach
Terrigal, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, February 4, 2012
1) Great dive company to dive this amazing wreck is Dive Adelaide Wreck - http://www.diveadelaidewreck.com.au/index.html. Really easy going professional company. Reasonable rates and a good guide to take us down.
make sure you get your permit to enter the reserve before you dive. The dive shop cannot do this for you.It costs $18 per person - http://www.visitcentralcoast.com.au/activities/diving/ex-hmas-adelaide-reserve.
2) Camp at Sun Valley Yourist Park. It is about a 20 minute drive and probably better places closer to the dive site to be honest. As we wanted to surf at Shelly we stayed here. Wouldn;t really recommed them. It was the off season and they had plenty of space but still put us against the main road. They also screwed up our booking by not providing enough keys to get in the carpark boomgate as we arrived late in the evening. They were flexible enought to let us have 4 cars on site and gave us a late check out. http://sunvalley.com.au/The location to the beach (150 metres) was the highlight.
(3) Good surf at Shelly beach.
I canot rate this dive enough. It had only been sunk a year ago, but the reef that has developed already blew me away. The ship was covered! Visibility wasn't the best when we went, was about 4-5 metres. We first saw the bow and entered the bridge which was an amazing experience. It is amazing to be on the bridge above water, but below water was a complete trip! The captains chair still had perfect leather on it and the dashboard was amazing. I lost hlaf my tank air with the excitment :-)
We entered the ship, climbed a set of stairs, went past one of the toilets with basins still in tact. On our second dive we requested to dive above the ship, the side and to land on the helipad. The guide had no issue taking us where we wanted. We also entere dthe flight deck and saw more of the inside of the ship.
Serioulsy and amazing dive. I will def go back!
If you are into surfing, Shelly beach is a great beach to dive at.
