Sanctuary

Warning - long text

Almost the main reason I'm in Australia is to visit the 2,600 km-long Great Barrier Reef off the east coast. For someone from a small island like Britain the scale of Australia takes a lot of adjustment and the map deceived me into thinking I could get to the reef at the southern end. But my lovely host in Christchurch used to live here so suggested I start at Cairns where the reef is much nearer. Even from here it was 90 minutes away by fast boat.

The coral and tropical fish are not deep and it's easy to watch them by snorkelling. I'm lucky enough to have snorkelled in the tropics before but having a mask that didn't mist up and didn't leak was a revelation. Because it's stinger season I wore a jellyfish-proof onesie - including mitts! - over my swimming costume. Inelegant (though possibly in my case no more than without) but at least no risk of sunburn.

I didn't hire a waterproof camera since Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough have shown it all to you much better than I could and I just wanted to lie on my front watching luminous green and purple giant clams open and close their 'mouths', the rainbow and butterfly fish dart in and out of the many varieties and colours of coral wafting in the currents, the beige flatfish try to camouflage themselves on the sand. The minutes dissolved and I couldn't believe how wrinkly my fingertips were after what seemed such a short time in the water.

The trip also presented me with my first ever opportunity to try diving. I expected it to be much harder than it was. In the training session I couldn't get my ears to 'equalise' (the pressure) in the way I was told they should but I had no problems in the water, perhaps because we went down only to 5m. The treat of diving was not so much being closer to the coral since it was so close anyway but being among the fish - looking up and seeing silvery shoals catching the sunlight. The shock of diving was trying to get out of the water. Heavy weights, heavy oxygen canister and heavy me!

Our afternoon stop was near Michaelmas Cay, a bird sanctuary on a sandbar. There were dinghy trips to get there but I just wanted to be in the water so snorkelled across to the bird-covered beach. I hadn't understood how restricted the permitted landing area was until I heard 'GET...OFF...THE...SAND' booming across the water. Oops. To the birds and to any Antipodeans who heard that, I'm truly sorry.