The Great Scuba Diving Course Saga

Stereotypical Aussie Activity 2: Scuba diving

After about 2 months of emails, cancelled courses, medical exams, and God knows what else, myself, Anders, Thomas and Laura finally qualified as Open Water scuba divers on 21st October. Considering we all expressed interest in doing a course through the Adelaide Uni club in the first week of lectures (late July!), it took a really long time to get qualified! We had a running joke that it was like a great saga, with multiple chapters of dread and despair, and at the end was the fragile hope that one day we would actually become qualified divers. So I begin this monumental tale.

Chapter 1 Difficult Beginnings

Well I am partly responsible for my slow journey to become a qualified diver. I missed the Adelaide Uni Scuba Club, who had a stall up during the first week of term. However, I felt that this would not be a problem. All I would have had to have done would be to email the club, sign up, and start diving. Well nothing is as easy as you want it to be now is it? I had to wait about 10 days for a reply to my email. In the email I was told I had to take a compulsory medical exam to prove that I was fit to dive. I didn’t take into account that appointments were hardly available, and there was a huge waiting list. I wasn’t able to book until about 12th September! It would be ages until I started my course. Luckily Sarah, a friend of mine, could no longer make her medical on 29th August, and was willing to do a swap with me. Great, so I was finally able to get a diving medical exam five weeks after sending that first email.

Chapter 2 The Medical

It was an irritating two and a half hours of my time! I arrived at the Royal Adelaide Hospital at 9am (never a good time to have to be anywhere). According to the letter I received the exam would only take about an hour or so, but this was not the case. After waiting for a while, I had to find my way through the confusing hallways to have a hearing test. The audiologist placed headphones on me, and played a series of very quiet beeps. Every time I heard one, I had to indicate I had done so my pressing a button. This was easy enough. Turns out my left ear is slightly below what it should be in terms of hearing power, but this was not real problem. Then I had to wait for about 20 minutes in another corridor before having an ECG. A nurse attached several patches to my body and monitored my heartbeat and whatever else an ECG measures. I was surprisingly calm considering I’d never had one of these before. Stupid forms listing endless unknown conditions had to be filled in next. Thomas and Anders (also taking the medical at the same time) had to ask me what certain conditions meant, as they didn’t know the meaning of them in English. I also had to give a urine sample, and another nurse measured my height, weight, and lung pressure. Then I met with the hyberaic doctor himself, who did a routine check, checked my balance and some other things. After all of this, he presented me with a form, with a tick in the “fit to dive” box and his signature. All of that for just a tick in a box! But at least the medical was done.

Chapter 3 Christmas is Cancelled

So now the four of us could finally get a course organised. The uni club don’t personally do courses, but organise them through a local school called Southern Diving. We were booked for a course over two weekends: the weekends of the 13th and 20th September. We were all very excited, but then, tragedy struck. Our diving instructor was Ill, and owing to the fact we were all away during mid-semester break, we had to wait a whole month until we could do it again! It was like Christmas had been cancelled. We were all so excited about starting, only to have to wait even longer.

Chapter 4 The Course

Finally we started our course. Tony, our instructor was a nice guy who showed us the ropes of scuba diving. Coupled with his teaching, we had a pack delivered containing a study book and DVD. The book had 6 chapters, and at the end of each we had to complete some ridiculously easy (and sometimes pointless) questions. The first day was spent in a dive pool 9m in depth. I had already tried scuba diving before, so the initial getting used to breathing underwater wasn’t a problem for me. We also went trhough some basic skillslike clearing your mask of water, finding your regulator (mouthpiece) if it falls out, etc. It was a good day, and we loked forward to diving in the sea the following day.

The next day we did two dives in the sea down at Port Noarlunga. Starting with a shore entry on the first, we headed down to a depth of about 5m, where we practised basic skills again. The second dive was fantastic. We went in by the jetty (after walking from the cars carrying about 15kg extra weight!) We followed Tony for a while, when he turned around and pointed upwards. The sight made me lose my regulator. There were dozens of fish swimming around the stilts of the jetty. Many came up to have a look at the strange sight of us in their waters. When we got out we were all smiling uncontrollably.

The following weekend included 4 more dives at Port Noarlunga. Again, basic skills were covered. One occasion saw Tony ask us to take our masks of underwater as we’d done before, but instead of us putting them back on again, he took them from us and instead pulled us along behind him. Even though I could still breathe underwater, somehow the fact I couldn’t see meant I couldn’t breathe! We saw plenty of fish, including a Port Jackson shark (not very big or dangerous), and simply enjoyed being in the water.

Chapter 5 The End of the Saga

All that was needed after the dives was to pass a simple multiple choice exam. Everyone passed and we receieved our licenses! Finally we were qualified scuba divers ready to explore. Thanks to Tony for instructing us, and to Thomas for driving us to and from Port Noarlunga.