Sebastian Heise :: Blog :: Photos

After leaving Sydney we made our way down south on the Princes Highway. It’s the coastal highway going from Sydney to Melbourne. It takes much longer than the direct route, but it offers stunning views and sleepy little villages.

Our first day took us through Wollongong past the Nan Tien Temple – a Buddhist Temple – down to Nowra where we stayed for a night in Shoalhaven Heads.

A quick detour to Canberra, ended up at an official highway that only was a gravel road. Canberra is an ‘artificial’ – or planned – city. The two rival cities Melbourne and Sydney couldn’t decide which of them sould be Australias capital, so they finally build a new city somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney. We didn’t really find a city center and had the impression that it didn’t have any flair – or soul.

So we fled Canberra after just one night and went back towards the coast, where we stayed in a cabin at a campground near Batemans Bay for two nights.
There was a colony of beautiful wild parrots somewhere in the area and we counted as many as 11 or 12 birds at one time. They were reasonably tame and would come even onto your hand if you fed them.
I booked a couple of dives to finally test my new Underwater-“bag” from ewa-marine that I got in Coffs Harbour. It’s a generic case for DSLRs that’s certified to up (down) to 50m. We went out early on Sunday morning in clear weather and calm waters. Half way to our dive spot the wind picked up and out on the ocean we suddenly had a swell of 2-3 Meters. Good that you don’t feel it underwater… The first dive was a deep dive (30m) and I was loaded with the new case, but didn’t have the camera in. The first time in that depth ( = high pressure) it felt more secure to first put a towel into the case to test it than having the actual camera in there. Well, the towel stayed dry! All pictures I took are still taken with my old Olympus.
While we were under water, the weather picked up even further and I preferred to stay the hour of surface time on a small island (well, it was more a rock in the middle of the ocean) than on the boat. Man I felt sick as a dog…..
The second dive was at a rather protected spot and not too deep, so there was quite a lot of fish to see.