As Friday the 13^th approached four intrepid divers watched the weather and vis, as they were heading to Byron Bay for the weekend, there was Dobby Dobson [aka the dive Nazi] and Dave Buhmann myself John Lawson from the Lionfish, and a good friend of mine Jenny. I got a head start on the others and got down there early on Friday for two dives and the vis and critters were playing the game for us, fish everywhere and some very friendly Grey Nurse sharks, at one point on the second dive I had five all around me at the same time with in an arm’s length very cool, as they were turning they were rubbing on me that’s a different feeling!

It’s not the clearest picture but it was almost touching my new camera. Well how do you tell your buddy’s how good the diving is [it might all change overnight]. So as everyone arrived we settled into our room at the backpackers next to Sun dive, getting a room was a battle in itself as schoolies from down south were filling up the place so we were told I think just a way of charging us more. With a bit of help from our good friends at Sun dive we got our own room. Saturday was warm and seas flat under the water it was 10 to 15 metres vis and a balmy 21deg, Julian Rocks turned on a show for us, friendly blue groper greeted us on our arrival on the bottom they swam under and over and all around us.

As we swam east from the nursery towards the cod hole we encountered all manner of critters from wobbegongs to clownfish, at the cod hole we found it full of Grey Nurse sharks. Every corner we swam around there was something new to see from giant cod, turtles, huge bull rays, monster yellow tail king fish, octopus and even a manta ray came by so they say good buddy’s would of let you know, you would think thanks Dave and Jenny.

As you can see even the Queensland Groper were on best behaviour, on the third dive on Saturday we decided to show Dave the Needles which is out to the west of Julian Rocks Jenny thought two dives were enough so she went shopping, as we swam west Dobby put his hand down on what he thought was a rock only to find out it was an octopus pretending to be a rock, I would of liked to of seen his eyes when this happened, we found four lionfish in the Moe hole it’s a bit of a hole in under a bit of reef that sometimes has some interesting critters in it, we then proceeded out to the line of smiles it is a north south running ridge with some cracks in it that lots of things hide in but it wasn’t putting on the same show that the rest of Julian Rocks was putting on.

Saturday night saw us fill our bellies with some very tender steak, and all manner of stories were told, we arrived back at our accommodation to find karaoke being played next door we thought oh no! I don’t know how the others got on I was gone as soon as my head hit the pillow, so it never worried me. Sunday saw similar conditions with brilliant diving at the cod hole with masses of Red Morwong and Jew fish some real big ones.

We even came across a Grey Nurse that had a big chunk missing on its side makes you wonder what or how that happened, we finished our last dive in Hugo’s Trench with all sorts of soft corals.

It was like swimming through an ornamental garden with every colour you could imagine, tiny fish swimming around like bees going from flower to flower, and plenty of feisty little Damsel fish protecting their eggs trying to chase everyone and everything away from divers to big cod to little wrasse.

So after a relaxing finish to our diving it was back to reality, clean our gear and pack it up and head home, battle the traffic and road works , it’s much better blowing bubbles with the fish cheers John.