In May 2015 I travelled up the coast from my home in New South Wales, Australia to Mooloolaba north of Brisbane. I was there to dive HMAS Brisbane, a guided missile destroyer deliberately sunk 2.9 nautical miles east of Mudjumba Island in 2005 to serve as an artificial reef and dive site. Sun Reef Dive Centre runs daily morning trips to it and I was looking forward to five days’ diving.
However like New South Wales, the lower Queensland coastline had been battered by bad weather for two weeks. I had chosen a very bad time to dive this wreck. One of the Sun Reef Dive Centre instructors called it the worst conditions he had seen in the last three years. The underwater visibility on Day One was terrible and diving was cancelled on Days Two and Three. Mick Todd joined me for Days Four and Five when at least we were able to dive albeit the water was green and underwater visibility poor.