Author Archive

Before the Ink Dries
By Captain Trevor Jackson

People can be a little quirky sometimes can’t they? When I was a boy I had a friend who loved to ride his bike right up close behind the school bus because he loved the smell of diesel. Another guy I knew committed to memory the number plates of every person he ever came in contact with…he could literally rattle of hundreds of them and never miss a digit or a letter. Read the rest of this entry »

We were fortunate that recent Cyclone Ita did not blow quite as hard as expected and although both Lizard Island and the Ribbon Reefs have sustained some damage, the results are better than expected. The Coral Sea reefs, Lighthouse Bommie, Snake Pit and Steve’s Bommie were not affected by Cyclone Ita. Read the rest of this entry »

Find Out How
Captain Trevor Jackson

Here is a little project for ya! Get on Google Earth. Are you doing that? Okay now fly yourself up to North Qld, find Cape Melville and keep going north till you hit Tijou Reef. Go to the top end of Tijou Reef and zoom in…there’s something funny there isn’t there? Notice what looks like some giant creature has taken a bite out of the reef just a wee bit down on the west face? Yeh …intriguing isn’t it? We thought so, so we went for a look in real life and what we found blew our minds. I’ve been diving this Great Barrier Reef its entire length and breadth for 30 plus years and I’ve never seen nor heard of anything that resembles this. Read the rest of this entry »

Yongala 2014
Captain Trevor Jackson

We are heading south on May 15 to see the results of nature’s latest muscle flexing. I wonder which version of the Yongala we are going to get. Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t know how many, but at least some explorers visited our part of the world before James Cook. Some, such as the Polynesians who colonised New Zealand, made journeys that were more difficult and perilous than even Cook’s epic voyages. Yet ask any amateur historian to name the pre-eminent sea-going explorer in our region and they will all name Cook. So what made him the “peoples’ choice” explorer? The answer is that Cook bought us back images, descriptions and maps that connect us to this day to what he found.  Cook documented his discoveries  compellingly; others did not. Read the rest of this entry »

Lap Around the Sun
Captain Trevor Jackson

The universe is just a giant clock….. tick tock…. tick tock.

The moon revolves around the earth sucking water to and fro, the earth spins on itself and laps the sun once a year. The sun lies on an outward spiraling arm of the galaxy spinning around its central core and the galaxy in turn spins around …well you get the picture. It happens quite uniformly and precisely and we end up back where we started and are at once off again to where we are going, wherever that may be. We live our lives putting misguided importance on stuff…cars, houses , toys for the kids…we want better education, a healthier return on our investments and an early and prosperous retirement….a new RV and then we’re gone and the earth keeps spinning and spinning and spinning. Read the rest of this entry »

One Way to Find Out
By Captain Trevor Jackson

2014 …..who’d have thought… I remember being back in high school in the early eighties wondering if we would see in the new century….and here we are well into the second decade and going strong. Back then the naysayers had the planet imploding or being struck by an asteroid or starving ourselves of oxygen, or simply disappearing when the computers rolled over into 2000.  None of it happened and the world is well quite frankly, a better place now than it was back then. We are more tolerant of others, more supportive of those in need and way way way more aware of our environment.  One simply has to peruse any of the pages of any of the social media avenues to see that humans are doing good…and so we should be, we are smart and we are innovative.  In my little part of the world looking out through the wheelhouse windows I see the reef as getting better each year…not worse…better! Read the rest of this entry »

Ain’t Seen Nothing Like It
By Captain Trevor Jackson

“And I’ve traveled round, been all over this world and I ain’t seen nothing like my Galway Girl”…………or so the song goes.  It’s about a guy walking along in a scenic place and he meets a girl who steals his heart away with her unparalleled beauty. It wouldn’t happen often, but every now and again something comes your way that redefines your universe. No I haven’t lost the plot or gone soft in the head…….but something new has come our way. We stumbled onto it in October and for me it is the diving equivalent of my Galway Girl. By that I mean ‘I ain’t seen nothing like it’. Read the rest of this entry »

At One with Nature
By Captain Trevor Jackson

Tech divers will often rave about the advantages of Closed Circuit Rebreathers over traditional open circuit scuba, and there are a few of them. They shorten deco times on deep dives, they save bucket loads on the use of expensive gas and they generally look spacey and cool. One other, often neglected advantage is that they don’t produce bubbles. Read the rest of this entry »

The Jaws of Coral
By Captain Trevor Jackson

One of the real eye openers from the Torres Straits expeditions last summer were the smaller and less known wrecks that turned out to be genuine highlights. The wreck of the Pandora for example offered little in terms of structure and marine life but in terms of history and its significance to our country, it was the diver’s version of Anzac Cove. We visited the Pandora on a glassy New Year’s day this year and it left all on board with a sense of having a tangible  connection with the greatest maritime story ever told; the Mutiny on the Bounty. On the site of the Pandora lay the remains of the ship that captured the mutineers and was attempting to bring them to front the cruel and often unjust 18th century British court system. That connection with history can sometimes massively enhance a dive, especially  when the opportunity only comes around so rarely. Skip forward to May 2104 and jump 600 miles down the coast…….. We get to touch history once again…..the SS Gothenburg. Read the rest of this entry »