Over the last few years we have done a number of trips to Bargara, mainly to explore the wonderful shore diving sites here, but on our most recent trip in June we decided to concentrate on a few of the boat diving sites.
After a five-hour drive from Brisbane, with a few pit stops along the way, we arrived in Bargara after lunch, our first stop Bargara Beach Dive. Owned and operated by Jac Stanton, who took over the dive shop last year, Bargara Beach Dive organise dive courses, boat dives, guided shore dives or advise on how to find the shore dive sites yourself. We were booked to dive Saturday and Sunday, but with time for an afternoon shore dive, Jason from Bargara Beach Dive took us to dive nearby Burkitt’s Reef.
For those that have never heard of Bargara, it is a lovely seaside town with pretty beaches and a wonderful range of shops, restaurants and accommodation. The shoreline at Bargara is unique in Queensland, being lined by black basalt rocks, formed by volcanic activity a million years ago. These rocks continue underwater and are completely covered by corals, making Bargara the only spot in mainland Australia where you can shore dive on coral reefs.
Divers can jump in almost anywhere along this section of coast, but of course some spots are better than others. One of the best is right in front of the town centre, where we were heading for our first dive, Burkitt’s Reef.
Gearing up at Shelley Beach we strolled across the sand and into the water. We then did a drift dive right around the headland which Burkitt’s Reef fringes. At first we were over sand, where we spotted a few stingrays, but we soon reached the rocks and coral. The reef here is only 2m to 7m deep and was a little surgy today, making photography a challenge even though the visibility was 8m (vis can vary from 2m to 20m along the shoreline at Bargara).
Corals soon surrounded us, a vast array of soft corals and hard corals, plus also gorgonians, sea whips, sponges and hydroids. We are always amazed by the thick coral gardens that thrive in the shallow water off Bargara. Swimming over the coral the only bare patches were the sand between the coral encrusted rocks.
The marine life was also pretty good, and got better the deeper we went. All around us were wrasse, butterflyfish, angelfish – including the local beauty the scribbled angelfish, gobies, pufferfish, parrotfish, morwong, batfish, d
amsels, sweetlips
and numerous other species. Invertebrate species were a little shy today, but
usually there are abundant nudibranchs, crabs, shrimps, sea stars and feather
stars.For much of the dive we had a school of large chevron barracuda drifting along beside us and at one point two impressive queenfish charged by. After an hour we came into an area of ledges, finding a fat starry pufferfish, a juvenile ornate wobbegong and several brown-banded catsharks. At the end of the dive we swam back to the town beach, had a shower and walked back to the dive shop, only a few minutes away from the beach.
Other wonderful shore diving sites in the area include Hoffman’s Rocks, Barolin Rocks and Double Rock. All these sites have just as much coral and marine life and in the past we have also seen olive sea snakes, Queensland gropers and turtles at these sites.
Saturday morning dawned a beautiful day, light winds and calm seas, a perfect day for diving Bargara’s most popular dive site, Cochrane Artificial Reef. This artificial reef is one of the best in Australia and was created by the Bundaberg and Districts Artificial Reef Association, with the first object sunk in 1992. Since then they have added ships, concrete pipes, water tanks and many other interesting objects to create a haven for fish and other marine life. The reef varies in depth from 14m to 18m and over 140 species of fish have been recorded on the site.
We departed the boat ramp at Elliot Heads on Fish Tails, a 6m charter boat run by expat Brit Dave James, who is a very interesting character, with many tales of adventure to tell. Located only three nautical miles offshore, we were soon anchored over the Cochrane Artificial Reef and ready for our first dive on the 40m long gravel barge Porteur.
Though the water looked a little green on the surface, the visibility was quite acceptable at 12m, but it can vary at the site from 5m to 30m. We headed towards the bow of the barge, following local guide Billy, who ducked into a hole to point out a rather large Queensland groper. The groper didn’t hang around for a photo, so we explored the barge.
There was plenty to see on this ship, with much of the structure still in place and plenty of access holes allowing safe penetration of the lower holds. There was also plenty of fish to see. Swarming around the upper structure were schools of striped barracuda and silver batfish. While exploring the ship we also saw nudibranchs, rock cod, lionfish, batfish, sweetlips, snapper, bream and several scribbled angelfish. Just before we surface two mangrove stingrays settled on the sand at the bow, so we couldn’t resist getting some photos. Stingrays are common around the wrecks, and in the warmer months divers can also see eagle rays, leopard sharks, reef sharks, shovelnose rays and the odd manta ray.
Back on the boat Dave had hot drinks and biscuits ready to warm us up between dives. After a brief surface interval we moved about a hundred metres to anchor on one of two lightships. These lightships are 25m long mobile lighthouses and were previously used in the channel at nearby Fraser Island.
Descending on the lightship, we quickly swam along its side as Billy was going to lead us to one of the special features of Cochrane Artificial Reef. Billy was leading us over a trail of besser blocks, which have been placed to link all the major attractions at the reef. We swam about 50m before we could see the dark shape in front of us, an object you don’t see diving everyday, a plane. Well it was actually most of a plane, a Mohawk to be exact, one of three planes placed on this very unique artificial reef.
This Mohawk has had its tail and wings cut off, but this allows easy access into the fuselage and to the cockpit. Sitting beside the plane was a green turtle that was completely unconcerned by our presence. Turtles are common on the reef, as are olive sea snakes, but we didn’t see any this weekend. After a few photos of the turtle we looked inside the plane to see a honeycomb moray and several banded boxer shrimps.
We then followed Billy, and the besser brick road, to the next plane, a much larger Kingair that still has a tail and part of its wings. Sitting under one of these wings was a very large Queensland groper. Shy, as most of these gropers are, the groper disappeared into the plane and then exited out the other side. Exploring this large plane we saw pufferfish, sweetlips, bream, snapper and the nose of an estuary groper hiding in the tail section.
Heading back to the lightship there was plenty to see here. You can enter the interior via large access holes or explore the light tower structure on top. The fish life on this wreck was astonishing, schools of yellow-lined snapper; trevally, fusiliers, batfish and feeding off them were larger barracuda and kingfish. Inside the wreck we found several estuary gropers and also encountered lionfish, a hawksbill turtle and a sle
epy spotted
wobbegong. This dive had our cameras working overtime.The next day we were back on the Cochrane Artificial Reef to explore more of its attractions. Our first dive was on the 50m long gravel dredge Ceratodus II, which was the first item sunk on the reef. Dave informed us that the dredge is upside down and the best place to explore is the dredge arms at the bow.
We started our dive at the stern, finding a resting green turtle and quite a few nudibranchs. Swimming along the side of the ship there were lots of reef fish to see and a huge expanse of coral growing on the upside down hull. A mangrove stingray glided past us, as did several barracuda, as we made our way towards the bow.
The bow area was packed with fish life, schools of snapper, pufferfish, a very large black spot tuskfish, bannerfish, angelfish, sweetlips and many other species. The dredge arms were fun to explore, and are covered in corals. Swimming back along the hull we found another turtle, big eye trevally and two giant trevally on patrol for a meal.
For our last dive we requested a return to the planes and lightship after such a great dive the day before. It was again superb with much of the same marine life, but we also got buzzed by a school of big eye trevally and spotted a highly venomous horrid stonefish wedged between two besser blocks.
We had a wonderful weekend of diving at Bargara and next time are hoping to explore some of the local offshore reefs, which we have heard are packed with coral and marine life, including manta rays. If you want to experience some of the most unique and interesting diving in Australia plan a dive trip to Bargara.