Friday 23rd May
I had slept pretty well during the night and was up at
05.30, and waited for the Ningaloo Reef Dreaming bus to pick me up at the
reception. This particular dive at the Navy Pier was considered a very special
one, and is advertised as being one of the top ten dive sites in the world. NRD
is the only company with a licence to dive there, so it was another reason for
me to get the package that I bought from them at the start of the week.
The Navy Pier dive is a bit different to the other
sites around Exmouth for several reasons, a major one of which is that you
don't need a boat to get there. We were also required to fill out forms with
all of our details on it and provide proof of identity; all of this information
was registered with the authorities who administered the pier area that still
belongs to the US Navy (but which does not have a presence there at the
moment).
After a short briefing, we got our gear sorted and set
off for the pier. We had to present our ID to a security officer and the
paperwork was given over to make sure that everyone on the dive could be
accounted for. The reason why Exmouth exists is because the US Navy built a
base here in the 1960s, and the town grew out of a need to service the several
thousand people who lived and worked in this very remote area. The 'Harold Holt
Communictions Station Towers' is a huge structure, with about nine very tall
metal towers close to 400m each was constructed to enable navy personnel on
land to communicate with submerged submarines around the world. It is
apparently one of the tallest structures in the whole of the southern
hemisphere.
We got to the pier, put on our gear and jumped into
the water off one of the lower-deck platforms. The temperature was pretty good,
although for some reason I was expecting it to be colder in the morning time.
There was about four of us plus a dive master, and we spent about fifty minutes
underwater, and the place was teeming with fish of all kinds and sizes: reef
sharks lying on the seabed, wobbegong sharks camouflaged on the rocks, a
frogfish, massive potato cod, octopus and a whole lot more. It was a great dive
and a good one to finish on.
I had really enjoyed the diving trips with NRD, even
though I couldn't say the same about their whale shark operation. However, I
was still quite annoyed by their attitude to customer feedback and opinions. At
the end of every trip, on all four separate occasions that I had dived with
NRD, they asked those of us who had enjoyed the trip to tell everyone about
them, that word of mouth was the best form of advertising. On the other hand,
they asked those of us who had not enjoyed it so much to 'leave town quietly'
without saying a word to anyone else. This could have been taken as a joke, but
it sounded like the crew had been provided with a script from someone else. It
seemed that it was company policy for them to ignore any kind of negative
feedback (they didn't hand out feedback forms), and I took this to be rather
arrogant, that any criticism of their operation wouldn't even be considered
because it had no value to them.
We got back to the hostel at about 10.30 and I spent
the rest of the day relaxing by the pool. It was nice to have a full day to get
my stuff in order, to pack my bag and take it easy before I got back on the
Easy Rider bus the next moring to continue on my WA road trip. We kept an eye
out for the ER bus that was due to arrive from Coral Bay at lunchtime, the same
time that we I had arrived into Exmouth almost a week before. It was nowhere to
be seen and nobody had spotted it at any stage during the day. Those of us who
were due to leave the next day were a bit anxious that it hadn't turned up, as
any delay would badly affect our own schedules further down the line. We were also
a bit concerned that something might have happened to the guys on the bus. It
finally arrived after dark and we got speaking to the guys that had been on it
for the day; there were reports that the driver was a complete muppet who
didn't know what she was doing. I didn't mind too much as long as she got me to
where I wanted to be close enough to the time I wanted to be there.
