Fish Rock Cave is their famous guided dive – the ‘only true ocean cave in Australia’, which runs 125 metres through the island.First of all, you drop down to 24 metres into a sand gutter where we were told the Grey Nurse Sharks hang out. Now to us, Nurse Sharks are those round-nosed, bottom-dwelling, gummy sharks with no teeth. So it was a bit of a surprise to be surrounded by 2.5 metre, sleek and pointy things with hundreds of teeth hanging out the front!
You then swim about 18 metres into the cave until the light fades and you reach the base of the chimney. Here we found a massive 3 metre Wobbegong Shark and while taking pics, noticed that our guide and the other 3 divers were disappearing rather quickly up the chimney ahead of us. No longer able to see anyone else’s lights, and with our ascent alarms going nuts due to the water pressure in the cave, we crawled up the chimney in the pitch dark, hopefully in their general direction. At the top, the tunnel stretches for 62 metres and we could see the others ahead. Just as the light startes to penetrate again,about 25m before the exit, there is a bubble cave at 6m that you can pop your head into.
The shallow end of the cave opens into ‘the Aquarium’ dive site and the friendly Blue Gropers (Groupers to us) hang around in the vain hope of a hand-out.
The fish life is an incredible mix of temperate and warm water species – everything from Eagle Rays & Morays to Clown fish.
This ‘Old Wife’ was new to us.
