Why on earth would you wake up at 4AM on a Saturday? To go diving of course!  Waking up in the dark, we grouped up in Brisbane and headed down to Brunswick Heads for a double dive with Blue Bay Divers. We geared up quickly and set sail by around 7AM. During the trip out, we saw a few whales on the surface, some breaching - why pay for whale watching when you can go diving and see whales at the same time? For the first dive, the six of us (John, Brittany, Debby, Ken, Jaime, and I) were the first group off the boat into the chilly 18 degree water. Our excellent guide Christina lead us throughout the dive, going through the Cod Hole and down to the sandy bottom. We saw all the usual suspects including turtles, mulloway, wobbegongs, kingfish, barracuda, grouper and of course, the grey nurse sharks.

The second dive was much more impressive; as we entered the trench we scared off a big Queensland grouper that was chilling out and almost instantly, we were surrounded by at least 10 Grey Nurse Sharks. As they cruised by us, they were close enough to touch but being the responsible divers we are we kept to ourselves and they did the same thankfully. Once we exited the trench we saw a few more GNS, plenty of nudibranchs, a couple of rays, turtles and a grumpy cuttlefish that wasn't too keen on saying hello.

After returning to shore and cleaning our gear, the group headed down the road for some lunch and some dive stories before heading back to Brisbane to enjoy the rest of the day (or maybe to catch up on lost sleep).

I'm sure that I speak for all of us  when I say that on this particular Saturday, it was definitely worth getting up early.