Alix Says:
Colin and I had just 8 dives under our belts when we headed to the ship wreck of the S.S. Yongala just off the coast of Ayr. The past 2 weeks anyone we met who was a diver, this was ALL they raved about, how incredible the dive was, how we absolutely had to do it and how it ranked as #1 of the ‘Ten Best Dives in the World”. The budget was getting tight, but after so many recommendations we decided to do 2 dives here rather than dive in Cairns. This also gave us our Deep Water certification, 1 of 5 certifications needed to move up to Advanced Diver.

A brief history: The S.S. Yongala sailed for only 9 years before it sank a mere 11km off shore in 1911. The ship had been sailing north and had received a signal at night via a lighthouse in Mackay that it could continue sailing on, when in fact not far north was a catagory 5 cyclone! Clearly this was what led to the ship’s dimise, which appears to have been very sudden and the boat sank quickly taking all 122 lives with it plus a prized racehorse. This tragedy became a mystery as the ship was never found until 1943, and now it has become a prime dive spot because the ship is like a mega-mini reef all to itself surrounded by sandy ocean floor.

These dives were epic I must say!! Just amazing, amazing gives no justice to how spectacular the millions of colors were, the thousands of variety of sea life all around us and the thrill of seeing this boat tipped on it’s side on the ocean floor. As a plus our guide had an underwater camera!

Colin Says:
This shit was crazy!!!! So much going on here. The outfit we went out there with was ace, as the Brits say. Totally pro. Our dive instructor Luke was the classic Australian, chiseled, tan, blond and everything is “beauuuuuuuuty”. We highly recommend Yongala Dive. We went with some seasoned divers as well some Brazilians shooting footage for a television show who had 1500 dives under their belt. We had to get deep dive certified which is merely answering the questions out of the PADI manuel and doing a little logic test down on the bottom some 27.6 meters underwater. We passed so we got to dive. 2 dives down at the wreck and you wanna do 5 or 6 more in the same day. Really awesome the amount of sea life that hangout around the wreck. Trying to gain an image of the boat was fun to do as well. The first time was just a head spinning air guzzling swim around the entire wreck. There was so much stuff to look at I barely knew where I was at or what I was doing.
Second dive I was able to get a much better sense of bearings and make out a lot more of the feature of the wreck. Swimming under its masts and along side its deck to see the engine room was so psychedelic. The whole diving experience in general is super psychedelic. The colors and life forms and shapes are all totally outrageous. For anyone into diving I would definitely recommend diving here.

Alix Says:
We saw a ray that was about 4m long – HUGE!!! A nurse shark, moray eels, tons of sea snakes elegantly gliding through the water. Swimming through these huge schools of fish was like being in some sort of a dream. Then these grouper, man, I had no idea what a grouper looked like much less that they are about 3 x’s the size of me, swimming along slow looking like they are pouting. Saw a sea turtle too – it was actually at the surface swimming around getting air and probably wondering what the hell we were, funny little bugger. Not actually little at all. The whole experience was like being in a living Crayola box. Not the standard 24 crayon box, the jumbo 150 crayon box.

Yongala Dive