Sunday, 27 January 2013 expedition. I’d get envious if the timing meant I couldn’t go along. I didn’t want 8th Wonder to miss out on being in on a new discov- Fantasy Hole & ery. Rosebud Reef People find different reasons to go div- ing. For some it’s the interaction with by Lloyd Borrett, VSAG. marine animals. Others are dedicated to A few years ago, VSAG committee underwater cave exploration, or the histo- member Graham Ellis came across a very ry of shipwrecks. For some it’s the depth, interesting anomaly in the hydro graphic or just the feeling of getting somewhere survey information for Port Phillip Bay. no man has been to before. There was a fairly large hole out from This new dive site might be my oppor- Rye where the seabed dropped from 15 tunity to go where no other man has been metres down to 32 metres deep. And on before. However, for some reason the the southeast side, the drop was almost planets never seemed to align properly. vertical! Could this be another site simi- Other things kept drawing us all back to lar to Portsea Hole, with a rocky wall? the usual dive sites. Graham started testing the waters by ask- Well in the last week of January 2013, ing other VSAG and Getunder members Graham was rostered as Dive Captain. if they knew anything about this location. The forecast weather conditions were No, was the consistent reply. such that a VSAG dive day incorporating A few of us would regularly natter away checking out the mystery hole was a dis- about the potential of this location as a tinct possibility. Graham put out the call new dive site and kept saying we’d go to VSAGers and the available dive boats there to check it out one day. A few times quickly filled. we tried to schedule an exploratory dive Who Graham Ellis’ boat: John Lawler, Benita McDonough, and Denise Ridgway.

24 | FATHOMS February 2013 – March 2013 Peter Campisano’s boat: Carol Campisa- tion, trying to keep both Graham and no, Bob Pavlich, Andrew Quested, and Peter in sight. Greg Breese. Eventually Graham was underway. By then Peter Campisano had reached South Channel Fort. I was about halfway be- tween the other two boats. Graham then announced we were headed in the wrong direction! (Maybe, just maybe, we should have shared the GPS marks for the dive site before leaving shore!) 8th Wonder Fantasy Hole We arrived at our destination and spent Lloyd Borrett’s boat “Raydon”: Cheryl some time trolling around, getting a feel Lees, Tony van den Blink, and guest div- for the place using our depth sounders. er David Goodwin. Everything we were seeing on the instru- ments just peaked our excitement. We soon located the top of the almost vertical wall and dropped a shot line in. There was very little current running. Tony van den Blink and I geared up, rolled backwards over the side and head- ed down the shot line. John Lawler and Benita McDonough were a few minutes in front of us. (We could tell from the silt kicked up on the silty bottom!) Still, the And so it was that on Sunday, 27 January visibility was crystal clear. 2013, we all gathered at The Scuba Doc- Yes, the silty bottom under us was not tor to load dive kit onto the three dive very exciting. But any doubts we may boats and prepare for the big adventure. have had about the potential of this new Safety briefings done, we headed down dive site were quickly swept away as we to Rye Boat Ramp and launched. dropped over the side of the wall. The Peter Campisano took the lead and head- transformation was simply sensational. ed out towards South Channel Fort at What an amazing underwater spectacle speed. Graham was still at the boat ramp lay before us! jetty, so I made my way out of the chan- The rocky wall was covered by the most nel and slowly headed in the same direc- amazingly coloured marine growth. (It’s

www.vsag.org.au | 25 moving juggernaut, and a flight of large eagle rays watching the show. Ledges cut deep into the rocky escarp- ment were like apartment blocks for the monster crays crammed along them. I’d heard tales about the size and quantity of crays at Cape Jaffa, but this had to be twice as good. I could image the eyeballs leaping out of JL’s sockets and bouncing around in his mask at the sight of it. As we came to the end of the wall we found a gently sloping decline carpeted with huge, plate sized scallops. We’d better not let the Black Rock club know about this site or it will be cleaned out Tony begins his descent. within a month! Photo: Lloyd Borrett. at times like this I wish I knew how to We ignored the plentiful swim throughs properly identity marine life so as to be and moved back onto the wall where at a able to better describe it to you.) If you depth of 25 metres we found a 3 metre thought some of the spots on Lonsdale diameter entrance to a cave. I signalled to Wall or the Great Barrier reef were col- Tony, asking him if he wanted to go in. ourful, then this was twenty times better. He signalled “OK” and followed me. Massive schools of small inquisitive fish The cave was completely dark. Switching and the less sociable weedy sea dragons on our torches, I thought to myself that were all loving their rainbow coloured this was not so much a cave, as it was a habitats in this lush sanctuary. Brightly curved tunnel, about the size Steve coloured, incredibly delicate and beauti- McQueen might have crawled through in ful iridescent nudibranchs were every- The Great Escape. where. My heart rate increased. My mind filled There were huge schools of the larger with trepidation. Then the tunnel opened bay species we’re all familiar with. Flo- into a flooded chamber about the size of tillas of old wives and flights of blue dev- a small church. Stalactites and stalag- ils. Squadrons of bronze whaler sharks mites untouched by human hand con- out in the middle distance, massed seven trived a magnificent scene. It was a ca- gilled sharks trying to mimic a slow- thedral, dressed in what looked like white marble.

26 | FATHOMS February 2013 – March 2013 I turned around to see if Tony was still light at its end. We made our way into there. He signalled he was okay. Then this 2 metre diameter passage, illuminat- something bumped into my back in the ed by the blue window of daylight from dark and I quickly spun back around. the cave’s end. Nothing to be alarmed about! It was only After exiting the cave’s second opening, I a huge Potato Cod, about the size of a was looking back, waiting for Tony to VW minibus! It had obviously come to come out. A large pod of bay dolphins investigate the bubble blowing divers come by to take a cheeky look into our who had disturbed it from its slumbers. new discovery. They seemed excited that The Potato Cod looked on as the two of divers had finally found this underwater us passed it by. I gazed back at it after secret spot. we’d passed. To my amazement, it come The dolphins distracted me from the de- up behind Tony and opened its mouth. It lights of the cave entrance and the vi- opened its mouth wider and wider. The brantly coloured wall in front of me. As I animal had teeth reminiscent of piano turned my back to the wall I was sur- keys. It then plunged down and encom- prised to come almost face to face with a passed Tony’s head in the voluminous baby humpback whale calf and its moth- opening. Oh my God! er. The calf was barely 5 metres long. I hit the huge animal as hard as I could. It It was surreal to see this leviathan moth- was like hitting a sofa with a paper hand- er, about 15 metres in length, suspended kerchief. It didn’t seem to make an im- just 5 metres away. Then with her mas- pression, yet it had the desired effect. The sive pectoral fins she moved forward and Potato Cod released its victim, looked at gently pushed the baby calf, riding the me reproachfully, and swam off offend- pressure wave just above her head, to- ed. Tony continued on unfazed. What a wards me. She stopped and watched on cool dude! as the inquisitive calf came up and Later at the surface, Tony asked me what nudged me. I stopped breathing. My had happened in the chamber when eve- mind was racing. rything went dark. “I think I accidentally Then I was suddenly aware that the bot- turned off my torch,” I replied. Some tom was no longer 5 metres below me. things are better left unexplained. My fins hit something solid and I looked Everywhere we shone our dive torches, down, thinking I’d been nudged by the the chamber revealed more of what no whale calf onto a rocky ledge of the wall. person had ever cast their eyes upon. It Wrong! There was a massively huge was a visual treasure. male humpback whale directly below me, On the far side of the room I spotted a having been masked in the gloom before. small exit tunnel with a glimmer of day- He now had his sights on moving up to

www.vsag.org.au | 27 place himself between his family and me. was no obvious signs of why it had sunk. This monster of the ocean was directly All of the hatches we found were closed between my legs! I had always wanted a shut. close whale encounter, but this was ridic- I found what looked like some Japanese ulous. or Chinese markings on the small coning I moved back toward the wall and the tower. Could it be that a Japanese mini- male humpback continued to rise, stop- sub had made its way to Melbourne in ping when I could look the big guy in the World War II and come to grief in our eye, just a metre away from my face. He treacherous bay? Or could this be the articulated his gaze and sized me up. Af- rumoured Chinese submarine that was ter about a minute, that seemed like a speculated to have kidnapped Prime Min- year, he slowly moved away. ister Harold Holt on Sunday 17 Decem- While I was wondering if I was suffering ber 1967 from Cheviot Beach on Point from a severe case of nitrogen narcosis, Nepean near Portsea? all three whales moved off into the dis- Bottom time up, I shot my SMB and we tance. I turned around to see Tony, with reluctantly started our ascent. A deep his head sticking out of the cave entrance, stop completed and then a safety stop, and his eyeballs out on stalks! eventually we were back on the surface, We both started to breathe normally taking in the fresh air, bathed in warm again and dropped to the bottom of the sunlight. wall. There we found seas of waving sea Had we just had an amazing experience grass, drifts of bright green sea lettuce diving what must certainly be the eighth and kelp on the rocky bottom with abalo- wonder of the world? Or, had it all been a ne attached in the rock crevices. fantasy, fuelled by the excitement and As we ventured away from the wall over anticipation of exploring a new dive site? the 32 metre bottom, we noticed a large Back aboard the boat, Tony and I were dark foreboding shape in the distance. speechless. Just how could we relate such Upon moving closer, I started to make an experience and have anyone believe out the shape of a submarine. Surely not? But yes, there right before us was a small submarine, covered with bright yellow coloured marine life. It was less than half the size of the J-class submarines we reg- ularly dive on outside the heads. How is this possible? We moved in close and inspected it from end to end. There Raydon moves in to pickup Tony and Lloyd. Photo: Lloyd Borrett.

28 | FATHOMS February 2013 – March 2013 us? The others fired off questions, but we reef on the sounder, so Graham’s boat just couldn’t provide answers. headed over to join us. Over the radio we heard a report from Rosebud Reef is a lovely shallow dive Graham’s boat that there was nothing situated about a kilometre offshore from below but a boring, virtually lifeless, Rosebud. An area of shallow reefs rising uninteresting mud hole. Obviously this two or three meters off the seabed in an was the work of the wily John Lawler. otherwise sandy oasis. The masses of fish The cagey bugger wanted to keep all all congregate here to feed. This in turn knowledge of the wonders and mysteries attracts some lovely harmless sharks pre- of this too good to be true dive site in the dominantly the wobbegongs and the sev- hands of as few people as possible. He’ll en gills. Port Jackson shark eggs are often now be extremely upset with me for hav- found on the site. It’s just a great dive ing revealed all. site. We waited for the divers from Peter Peter Campisano anchored on the mark, Campisano’s boat to surface and then Graham deployed a shot line, and I de- recovered our shot line. Meanwhile, Gra- ployed a buoy line. Cheryl Lees and Da- ham took off to Rosebud Reef. vid Goodwin went in. Graham and Den- My mind was still reeling from what I’d ise Ridgway were to join then, but I was just experienced, but it was time to put all later informed that didn’t happen. Tony of that behind me and continue the dive and I ate our lunch. day as if it hadn’t happened. Cheryl and David covered a lot of ground to the west of the mark. JL kept wonder- Rosebud Reef ing why they were still down, as all he With our shot line safely aboard I looked could see on the sounder was a flat sandy up the GPS marks for Rosebud Reef and bottom. But Tony and I kept finding found I had two: one just inshore from the Hurricane; and the other some dis- tance east of that. I headed to the latter one and Peter followed, not having marks for Rosebud Reef in his GPS. Graham informed us on the radio that they were already on the dive site. As we closed on the mark, Graham’s boat was no-where to be seen. A radio call to them revealed they had gone to the other mark but hadn’t found the reef. We ar- rived at our destination and found the Bob Pavlich on Rosebud Reef. Photo: Andrew Quested.

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Marine life abounds on Rosebud Reef. Photo: Andrew Quested. some reef structure close to where the Eventually it was time to go back to the divers were, so we were confident they surface. With everyone aboard the dive were having fun. And indeed, that was boats we headed to Rye Boat Ramp, and the report when they surfaced and were then back to The Scuba Doctor to unload safely back aboard the boat. gear, get air fills and have a chat on the After a suitable surface interval, David, couch. Tony and I tumbled back into the water Yet another magnificent VSAG dive day and explored the reef. It’s always just that will never be forgotten.  such a delightful dive with plenty of in- teresting small stuff to look at.

We came upon a large school of old wives. The others moved on, but I stayed there and gradually the old girls accepted me, with some moving in for a close look.

30 | FATHOMS February 2013 – March 2013