There is a hobby or an activity known to man as scuba diving. Then there is scuba diving in Australia. Because the latter activity is so diverse, so magnificent and so different, it may as well be considered a different hobby altogether. In this article, I will not be actually only naming three great scuba diving sites that can be found in Australia, but I have rather divided several scuba diving sites into three different locations: Queensland, New South Wales & Western Australia and I will be pointing out scuba diving sites that should definitely be included in your bucket list.
Let us start with Queensland. This is Australia’s home to one of the world’s best diving sites. The diving industry is quite busy in this area and most of the scuba diving activity you will get to do here will be tropical reef diving. For the most part, teaching travelers how to scuba dive are the primary occupation of a lot of locals but if you are more of an experienced diver, you can also find shops that will provide you more challenging scuba dive trips. In Queensland, you will find Australia’s biggest scuba dive attraction- and I am talking of course of the Great Barrier Reef. Day trips and liveaboard packages are available depending on your preference and you can see everything in this reef from corals to sharks to turtles and even shipwrecks. Another interesting dive site is actually the artificially made reef located in the Sunshine Coast, where the HMAS Brisbane was deliberately sunk approximately a decade ago.
The next best diving area in Australia are the ones in New South Wales. Be prepared for some cooler waters here. In fact, the water is quite cold in summer and in winter that divers would need to wear 5mm wetsuits during the former & add vests & hoods to their wet suits during the latter. There are several diving sites worth a visit, namely the following: Byron’s Bay & the Solitary Islands Marine Park in the North Coast, Bare Island & Magic Point in Sydney & Jervis Bay in the South Coast. Jervis Bay is the best diving site in New South Wales.
Diversity is the name of the game if you dive in Western Australia. If you are more adventurous than the normal scuba diver, you can try cage diving with great white sharks. Operators who offer cage diving can be found in Port Lincoln. If you are more of a wreck diver, enjoy diving through the wreckage of HMAS Hobart, which was a large warship. If you are more into looking at rays, weedy seadragons & other large fish, your preferred dive spot would be Rapid Bay. If you are a beginner, you can try Port Noarlunga Jetty.
The ones I mentioned above are not the only dive sites in Australia. There are tens and probably even hundreds more. So start mapping out your itinerary and head off to one of the world’s best sites for scuba diving- Australia.