It’s easy to keep up the routine in life.  Get up  (after hitting snooze three times), get kids to school (after bugging them three times), exercise (if there is someone relying on me to show up) get ready for work, work, yell and scream at work, home, dinner, bed … repeat.  Although often comforting, sometimes you just need to get off the wheel and take off.

Ms Z suggested some time ago that diving the SS Yongala off Ayr might be fun.  Now, ashamedly, I have lived and dived in the Far North for over 20 years and I have not dived the SS Yongala – colloquially known I found out as the “Townsville Titanic.”  Rather funny really as nothing much else other than the colour brown comes out of Townsville … and maybe some BS about a drive incorporating the name “Great Barrier Reef” – it should be the Great Cane Way – with potholes!

So I agreed on a whim and low and behold, the day arrived to depart!  A bit of a road trip (7 hours), throwback to the good old days of school camp (dorm room accommodation), eating like queens (microwave meal), booze on a budget (beer) and the joy of a shared bathroom.  Lucky for me, the days of Princess Pouty Pants are pretty much over and I rather enjoy the communal life on occasion – especially when it means I can slob around in no shoes and no make up as the expectation is we are here to do serious diving, not impress the dive instructors (those days are looooonnnnnngggg gone) and perhaps score a sneaky shag.

Hurriedly throwing a whole lot of random shit into a bag, we set off to dive what is considered one of Australia’s greatest wreck dives – but as mentioned – it is going to take us 7 hours to get there.  Only two wee stops and the expected stop for lunch at Maccas, arriving in Alva Beach we claim our bottom bunk beds (there is nothing elegant about two women over 30 climbing a bunk ladder) and head back to town in search of food … and beer.  Now, in some traditional country towns in the Far North, the supermarkets don’t open on Sundays, so it was a drive around town and stopping at a screaming halt in front of the pub advertising take out pizza (I REFUSE to eat Domino’s – I would rather STARVE).  Well after that little comment in the car I was forced to eat my words – literally.  Pizza sucked.  Beer saved the day.

As a 42 year old mum, I have proudly, for the past 20 years admitted my undying love for The Bold and the Beautiful and steadfastly refused to watch the utter garbage of reality (scripted and heavily edited reality) TV.  Well when you are stuck in Alva Beach for the night and your dive companion is obsessed with Married at First Sight, one must oblige.  Curse you Ms Z!  Now I have to watch it tonight to see if Tracey licks her lips and changes her mind about dumping Mr Cheat Fest Dean as according to the Woman’s Day, licky lips is pregnant!  Oh the SHAME!

But what is this turtle business?  On the way to town we thought we saw a little turtle scurry off the road into the cane.  Both of us swore blind we saw it, so it HAD to be real (at this point no beer had been consumed).  Then to our excitement we saw another one!  No.  It was a hat.  So on the way back we were looking out for them.  And there one was, middle of the road, asking to become a turtle burger.  Now I know for sure, I am a kind hearted person – because I had to save it from digestion by burger!  But what to do with him?  Put him in the car and find a pond of course.  Lucky he didn’t pee everywhere, as I understand from Mr D that turtle pee is the most foul smelling of urinary excretions.

We are heroes of the turtle world!  Givers of life!  Applauded by animal lovers around the world!  Until … we saw three more of them.  Apparently it’s a thing.  They come out at sunset in the area – for God only knows what reason, but they do.  And here we were, Ms Z and I laughing at how fucking amazing we were for saving the turtle!  And yes, just in case you were wondering, we stopped all the other times too.

Up early and off we toddle to not be mollycoddled diving.  A somewhat new experience – even though Ms Z and I are both experienced divers, we are used to dive masters fussing over us and checking on us and generally holding our hands every kick of the fin.  Not this time.  Build your gear, get your wetsuit on, cram into the back of the beach bashing Troupie with 10 of your mates, paddle through the shallows and decidedly ungracefully, haul your fat arse up the ladder into the rib.  Find a seat and hold the fuck on.  Bless Travelcalm.  Now if my arse wasn’t sore from driving 7 hours, it was now, and I swear the cellulite had been bashed out of it.  30 minutes of Speedy Gonzales bouncing round like pong, we suit up and roll backwards off the rib.  See ya!  We were on our own.

The SS Yongala is no meek and mild dive.  She sits between 16 and 30 metres of open ocean with a surface swell guaranteed to improve your body surfing skills and a current that could, if strong enough, ensure you arrival on Magnetic Island.  Complete with drop tank (just to make you feel better) it’s get down deep and go, go, go!

She’s 110m long.  And she’s beautiful. She is however, tragic.

She sank with 122 souls, 2 bulls and a racehorse called Moonshine on the 23rd of March 1911 courtesy of Cyclone Heather.  She wasn’t found until the 1940’s when surveyors looking for marine mines skimmed over her thinking she was a reef.  Several years later, two divers found her, claimed her safe as evidence and she was discovered – skeletons and all.

In respect for the wreck and the dead, one doesn’t go into the wreck or through it.  But there is so much to see around and above it.  With 500 dives under my wetsuit, I have NEVER seen so many fish, big fish, big, big fish – schools of them.  GT, Maori Wrasse the size of a six person dining table, stunning soft corals, mating sea snakes, Moray, Cow Tail Ray and did I mention the FISH?  At 26 metres I didn’t even realise I was down there – it was STUNNING.

So it’s bouncy, bouncy home for microwave roast beef and a beer … the promise of more scripted reality TV, the comfort of seeing another turtle on the road and the anticipation of meeting Miss Yongala again tomorrow.