My first real experience with diving occurred when I began my Open Water course in a quarry back in the United Kingdom. During the course it blew my mind that they had purposely sunk a few helicopters and a fully stripped passenger jet. This just made me think I would love to do more fun dives like this!

So upon arriving in Sydney to begin my diving internship with the shop I was always asking when my advanced course was, dying with anticipation to feel that magic and wonder I felt when I first saw a wreck underwater. So after a few weeks of pestering Carl constantly to do my advanced course the time finally arrived. I had a very fortunate sense of timing, I was lucky enough to do my Naturalist dive on the one and only Ship rock. Sam showed me all the cool marine life I had never seen such as a mosaic moray eel. After that we set off to Oak park and learnt how to further improve my compass skills
will my dive buddy Blake. Sam asked myself and Blake to perform a square route underwater, myself using the compass and Blake counting the fin kicks, after our “square” we skillfully and with a little amount of luck made our way back to Sam in the perfect direction

The day I had been looking forward to for months arrived the day I would do some boat diving. Jamie took myself and a few other students out to do our deep and wreck dive. Eger with joy we descended down into the Abyss (sorry couldn’t resist) to find the remains of the boiler from the Royal Sheppard. While we were there Jamie showed us how much the pressure had an affect on certain items, the highlight form me has defiantly got to be when he cracked an egg on my mask and the yoke stayed in a condensed ball. After that we whizzed up to a dive site called the Apartment blocks. This is up on my top 3 dives that I have ever done even with  having been to the Great Barrier Reef. 15 meters visibility, tones of swim throughs and the first time I saw a wobbegong shark free swimming along. There were only two words I could use to describe the dive to Jamie who asked “how was it?” I replied with a huge grin on my face “Mind Blowing”.

Yours truly, Ben Holden

If you would like to find out more about a diving career then why not come to our next  Free Diving Career Seminar.