The Great Barrier Reef

We were into the home stretch on the world cruise and I was like a prisoner counting his days till release, my cabin situation had been sorted and I had blagged my own cabin till the end of my conttract and I was staying far away from most of the photo team drama that seemed to continue on a daily basis.

I had become a bit of a shut in since getting my own cabin as I had finally given me an escape from getting drunk every night and avoiding the soap opera that was the crew bar and once I'd recovered from my months of no sleep I was ready to enjoy my last month onboard. Through playing in the crew bar band I'd become friends with most of the musicians onboard and the next cast and I'd regulary hang out with them and my buddy Zach from the youth staff and Dazza was still there on his epic nine month contract from the spa.

I was also about to film my 2nd of the 'greats', I'd visited the great wall of China a few months earlier and now I was about to film the Great Barrier Reef which again I unfortunately knew little about beforehand. My senior was trying to wrangle a helicopter tour as visually that would be stunning and really tip our sales over the edge unfortunately despite it being a world cruise head office didn't spring for it and we ended up having to re-edit stock footage.

I was with Dan & Zach that day and once we disembarked the ship we took a ridiculously bumpy tender ride to a reef platform and I had brought my underwater camera kit with me planning to film under the sea.

There was just one little problem that we hadn't anticipated and that was the tour company had not given permission for us to film on the excursion and would not let me film. Now this happens a fair bit on some runs and it is almost always because the tour operator sees you as direct competition for the DVD they are filming and trying to sell to the PAX on the day as well.

So no work for that day it would seem, but being an affable bunch the Aussie tour operators offered us a half price introductory scuba dive!!! Having only just learned to snorkel on my past contract in the Carribean I'd just assumed I'd be doing a bit of snorkelling that day, but now I was going to scuba dive for the first time and of all places at the Great Barrier Reef!

As most of us were completely inexperienced it was kinda like a tandem dive in that each person who went down had an instructor with them keeping an eye on readouts and making sure we were okay. Before we descended we were shown the various hand signals that we would need to indicate if we were okay or in trouble.

Its strange as you really cannot get a sense of the Barrier Reef from the water, you really need to be in the air to see it all laid out before you, that said once you dive beneath the waves the scenery is exquisite.

Having never dived before I was pretty happy with how I got on the first time and we had the Reef platforms video guy down filming us (for a change!) as swam around the ocean floor. It was a shame that I didn't get to film but then again if I had been working I would never have had the opportunity to scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef.

Once our time was up and we were on our catamaran back to the ship the video guy from the Reef platform acutally hooked the camera up to the TV on the catamaran so we could see the rough footage of ourselves filmed jsut minutes agom as sales techniques go it was pretty fucking good and I bought the DVD right there and then. Of course this being 2008 they still had to edit and send it out to me so I put down my home address and the DVD was waiting for me when I got home about 6 weeks later.

Here is that footage

Its funny looking back at the footage now taking into account how Go-pros have revolutionised the underwater filming market, its also one of the rare occasions where I'm looking at a video that I didn't shoot or edit! I will give them bonus points for the early epic sounding music before it goes into something much more generic and the fact it is in 4:3. Looking back now the clip is barely edited with several video abborations in it and also an 8 minute video cost well over $100 Aussie dollars, but I'm fairly certain theses guys were churning out tons of these DVD's each day and lets face it scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many of us so when you a chance to do that and it be the first time you've ever scuba dived AND have a video of that experience I'm sure like many people you will pay whatever for that video.

Easily one of the most iconic moments of my life at that point although I don'y think my boss was to impressed when he found out I wasn't allowed to film, of course this goes back to the lack of communication that occured fairly often between video and shore ex head office which usually resulted in us the videogs having to blag our way through with the tour guides in the hope that they will let us film bceause no one else has told them what we are there to do.

On the next cruise diaries - Last days of the world cruise (for real this time, as it was supposed to be this chapter but I almost forgot to write about the Great Barrier Reef!!!!)