Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

My 10 pm flight from Bris to Cairns did not arrive until after midnight. The airport taxi line provided a surprising efficiency and although I was one of the last fliers to get my bag and jump into line (dozens of people back), the queue took only about 15 minutes. I think the cab driver drove me a bit out of the way and back because the toll went over the twenty-dollar mark even though the hotel staff informed me that it would be about 14-15 bucks. I decided not to argue or complain as it was late and I just wanted to sleep. The hotel I booked on-line, bragging about being centrally located turned out to be a 25 minute walk from the city center. Again, as the hotel clerk told me this, I decided not to complain. He was being somewhat helpful regarding booking my great barrier reef tour (even now at 12:30 am), so I figured all is okay with the world.

Once inside my room, I called the company he recommended, only slightly wondering if it was a scam with a kick-back provided to him. They had a 24 hour reservation number, unlike some of the other tour companies, so I swallowed my cynicism, and called. Within minutes, I had myself booked on the 8:30 AM tour to the outer Great Barrier Reef. I needed to be at the dock at 8 AM, so I undressed and climbed into bed, after backing up my wake-up call with the in-room clock radio.

The next morning, my eyes opened early, without the assistance from either source. I was eager to get on that boat to see one of the wonders of the world. I remember hearing that the Great Barrier Reef, although a bit of a misnomer since it is actually a series of separate reefs, is the world’s largest living organism – visible by the astronauts from the moon. Having never really been an underwater person, I was not sure what activity I could do to see all that was possible, but I had settled on doing the included snorkeling and maybe the glass bottom boat. However, after boarding, the young, friendly staff began selling me on scuba diving. I thought I could easily deflect their attempts to up-sell me, but they countered with a first time, assisted dive that included training. This got me thinking. I have always wondered about scuba diving, but the thought terrified me to be honest. Skydiving, bungee jumping, zorbing, free jumping off buildings – did all that without a problem, but the thought of being under water without being able to breathe freely is a whole different thing altogether. The young Swiss kid was pretty persistent, but I managed to put him off as I thought about it.

Stupidly, or fortuitously, I managed to be sitting in the front of the boat when they began the training for first time scuba divers. I pretended to be a part of the group, even though at this point I had not yet decided what to do. I found the training course simple and not too terrifying. After the conclusion of their training presentation, they counted the heads and noticed that I had not yet signed up. To add the last bit of sales pressure, they told me that if I got the equipment on and freaked out after trying everything on the loading platform, I could cancel and not pay anything. This strategy worked on me. I figured if I could suit up, try on the gear, go under water and breathe without freaking the hell out, then I could venture deeper into the underworld of fish, coral, and creatures.

I signed up. My group would be third off the boat. I had an hour of snorkeling before going under water. I was the first person into the water to snorkel. The boat was mostly old people and families, so my quickness was not a huge feat. I shed my clothes and got into the Lycra jumpsuit posthaste and made my way out just above the Great Barrier Reef. Once my mask hit the water, I say a world beyond belief. My first reaction was a tear of joy (a common theme this trip). My eyes filled with colors I never expected to see – neon yellow, green, and blue. Then, I noticed strange fish everywhere. My eyes, my mind needed to digest and compartmentalize. Too much, too soon, I thought. So, I tried to focus on one element of this glorious chorus of beauty at a time. I told myself to see colors only. Focus on that. I floated above the reef and tried to just see the colors beneath me. A rainbow of colors and more lived right beneath me. The neon colors were the most striking to me, perhaps because they were so unexpected to me. I then began to see other colors – black, white, brown, tan, reds, grays, orange, and purples. Next, I focused on shapes. The coral appeared to be shaped like giant mushrooms, mountain sized cauliflowers, forests of deer antlers, clouds, and other vegetables. I floated above it all, trying to notice one thing at a time. Then, finally I was unable to resist the movement of the amazing creatures that swam around it all and next to me. I saw tiny minnow type fish, long eel looking creature, sea cucumbers, large fish that almost matched my size, normal sized fish one could buy at the market, sting rays type creatures, jelly fish things, and baby Nemo fish. The whole experience overwhelmed me. As I brought my head above water, I heard my name being called over the loud speaker. It was time for my dive.

I swam back to the floating, semi-permanent dock they called Marine World and made my way to the scuba area. The group I was to be with was waiting for me anxiously and annoyed. The staff quickly geared me up and had me on the training platform within five minutes. I barely had a chance to get nervous, although I managed to do so nonetheless. Even though I had paid close attention to the training session on the boat as we journeyed toward the reef, I was now wondering if I was forgetting things. Breathe through my mouth, not my nose. Tilt the mask from below and shoot air through my nose while holding the mask at the top to get water out of the mask and away from my eyes. The thumbs-up sign does not mean all is good, it means “take me up”. If I lost my mouthpiece during the dive, I was not to hold my breath. I was supposed to blow little bubbles out of my mouth while I put the mouthpiece back into my mouth. All these rules raged through my mind as I descended the latter into the water onto the platform. The girl who did the training was not the one taking us down, that too gave me pause – she was my teacher and now they switched it up.

The male instructor was very quick with us. He instructed us to get on our knees. To put in our mouthpieces and to submerge ourselves while resting on the platform. Once under, we were to watch him and run through the drills. This happened very quickly and apparently I passed because he then told us he would grab us one at a time and pull us under for the dive. The turning back point was right now, but I didn’t have the fear I expected, so I pushed forward and let him pull me into the ocean beneath the platform. I said a little “sweet Jesus help me” as I went under. Then, silence, except for my exhaled breathing. I released my hand from the safety rope and found myself amazingly swimming to keep up with the diving instructor. The fact that I was diving at the Great Barrier Reef without hours and hours of training and course work, amused me and I laughed, causing a little water to go into my nose. Luckily, I did not panic.
My sinus problems betrayed me and I was unable to equalize my ears, in spite of trying everything they had told me to try. Regardless, I refused to go back up, even after the instructor could tell I was a little distressed by it. I lied and motioned that it was better, even though my right ear was killing me. I was going to do this no matter what.

We continued diving, the instructor leading the three of us novices into a world unknown to us. I was not literally on top of and touching some of the creatures I had seen only moments earlier from the surface while snorkeling. The underwater vantage point opened up a whole new perspective on these things. What appeared to be smooth surfaces from above proved to be thousands of tubular forms so jammed together that from above they just looked continuous. Beneath what looked like mushrooms, lived all sorts of small fish and ocean creatures, moving in and out of their habitats. Our guide/instructor carefully moved various living objects aside, showing their attachments to the coral or rocks. He pointed out eels and sharks and animals I cannot even explain or describe.

At various points, he instructed us to kneel on the ocean floor and he brought creatures to us to hold and inspect. While we did this, the team photographer came by to take pictures of us under water. This was the only time I got myself into a mental place of panic. Something about sitting idle caused my breathing to become irregular. I took in some seawater which exasperated my panic. My body did not want to stay on the bottom (I may have need more weights on my belt compared to the overweight guys who were diving with me). I was trying to stay there, but my ears were hurting. At one point, I thought about just rushing up to the surface, but I knew that was a mistake. Later, when I viewed the pictures the photographer took, I could see the panic in my eyes – wide open, with my cheeks hallow from sucking in air dramatically. That was the only point in the dive that I did not like.

After the pictures, we swam on and everything seemed to normalize with my equipment (or at least my operation of the equipment). I could not believe how wonderful scuba diving felt – emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. All my sensations seemed to be firing full blast, yet I was at peace. I was visiting another world and feeling quite lucky to be doing so. Then, it was over. We swam back to the platform and made our way up to the surface. Besides being a little cold, the experience was superb. I decided then and there to do it again.
After explaining my ear situation to the staff, they informed me that I had better not dive again for a while so that my ear could repair itself in the off chance that I tore the eardrum. Great, I thought, here I am at the Great Barrier Reef, learning to dive, wanting to do it again, and now I cannot. The lunch had begun, so that distracted me from my disappointment. Surprisingly, the lunch on Marine World was tasty. I tried just about everything, except for the large Shrimp, which I thought considering our location, seemed a bit callous to our friends beneath us. I also took the time to unpeel the Lycra and wetsuits and take in a 20 minute sunbath, thinking maybe a miracle might heal my ear. Much to my displeasure, the ear only got worse. I had pretty much lost all hearing in the right ear and the feeling of water-log only increased as well.

So, after resting and digesting, I decided to put the Lycra suit back on and go snorkeling. I didn’t want to piss away the day feeling sorry for myself. I repeated the same process, this time being sure to better survey the items beneath me, wondering if I had simply over-looked the details the first time that were obvious to me while I was scuba diving. Sure enough, the perspective was the same. This, of course, sent me into my head considering the implications of teaching moments relating to this realization. How many things appear one way only to be shown to be completely different with deeper analysis or observation? So, I philosophized to myself and floated for a good 45 minutes alone, with my reef below me. Then, I noticed that a few of the people on the tour had taken off their Lycra suits and/or wetsuits and were snorkeling in their swimmers. What a wonderful idea. It took me a few minutes to get back to the starting platform. Once on it, I peeled off the Lycra and stood there in my Speedo. What the hell, I reasoned; none of these people know me. I put my flippers back on, secured my mask and mouthpiece and jumped back in.

The rush of the water against my naked body felt stupendous. I should have done this in the morning I thought as it sailed through the water much more easily. It was then that I noticed her, a beautiful Hump headed Maori Wrasse swimming, no gliding, beneath me. She was about four feet long and three feet tall and sparkled with the brilliance of neon purple, yellow, green and blue. I had seen her while I was scuba diving, but she paid us little attention. This time, I tried my best to keep up with her, following on the surface as fast as possible, but she was faster than I. Telling her that it was “okay, I just wanted to play,” as I put my hands out in front of me (above her), and let her swim beyond me. Then, it happened. I say her eyes look up and back at me. She turned, swam up directly toward me and made contact. She literally swam right into my arms. I suppose the sight of a very large fish coming directly in one’s path would cause panic in a lot of people, but it exhilarated me. I caught her with my hands and let her swim through them, careful to caress her gently with the love of appreciation. She calmly swam under me back to a position about four feet beneath me – just deep enough that I couldn’t reach her, but close enough that I could see her well enough to follow, which I did. We repeated this dance for some time. I swam all over the reef following her. Each time I reached out my arms as if to hug her, she would turn and swim up to me and allow me to hold her, touch her, pet her, caress her, and love her. Sometimes, I would flip her, causing her to turn somersaults in the water, other times I would lift her above surface to watch her swim back below.

After nearly 45 minutes or so, during a very special pass where she literally let me hold her in my arms for thirty or so seconds, I noticed her eyes looking at me. Then, it made sense. I felt something profound. I felt my grandmother in this fish. I cannot explain it so that it makes any sense to anyone else but me, but then and there, I knew my dead grandmother was communicating with me from another dimension. When I was a young kid, and even as a young adult, my grandma had a loving way of looking at me. It was a peaceful way, a look that made me feel loved and secure. It was something that she and I shared. When I was a troubled young kid, her loving look made me feel okay. It was this look that the fish gave me and it was mesmerizing. It took me a minute to make the connection, but then it was like a sledgehammer. Once I did, she swam through my hands and then far away from me, leaving me on the surface freaking out. Did this really just happen?

I followed on the surface, now crying a little from the emotional connection, and found her just beyond the coral in a deeper part of water where the ropes told us we were not to swim beyond. To hell with their rules, I was following my grandma fish and could not be limited by ropes. I caught up to her, this time she was much deeper, nearly 15 feet beneath me. I decided to test her. So, I called out into the ocean and said, “If you are my grandmother, then swim back up to me.” I held out my hands as I had done prior, and watched as it happened. She turned from deep beneath me, looked up at me, then b-lined toward me. As she made her way to me, I gulped a bit of seawater from the shock of it. Within seconds, my grandma fish was back in my arms and I was holding her, literally holding this very large fish talking to her on the surface of the ocean at the Great Barrier Reef. This time, unlike back in New Zealand, grandma didn’t say anything back to me. She just gave me the look and then scurried free from my hands back to the freedom of the ocean below.

Convinced that my dead grandmother had somehow manifested her spirit into this large fish, I decided to spend the rest of my time at the reef with her. I mean how often does one get to swim with their dead grandmother in Australia at the Great Barrier Reef? I told her how pleased I was that she made the trip with me (since it was her dream too). I told her about my life now and how happy I was. I told her that she made a difference in the world and that she was loved by many. We had a wonderful one-sided conversation as I swam miles around the reef chasing her. Toward the end of the time we had at the reef, grandma fish came back up to play with me a number of times. Unbeknownst to me, the young English kid I had met earlier on the boat had been watching grandma and me for some time. He later told when we surfaced to talk, that he was amazed by the way I would hold out my arms and she would come running (swimming) to me. He tried to mimic me several times, but grandma only came to me. She only let me hold her. She only looked at me with those soft eyes, reassuring me as she always did that everything was going to be alright.