So today we went free diving at Oak park which is a small beach just east of the famous cronulla beach in sydney’s south coast. On saturday we were not sure if we were going to go diving at all because it had been raining all week and the dark clouds were still looming. We were ready to just go to one of the safe little rock pools and do some free diving drills but opening the windows today, it was a pleasant surprise to see the sun shining and hardly any clouds unless you looked really far into the horizon towards the south.
Damir and I decided that today’s dive site was going to be one of 3 places we had been eyeing for a while. It was going to be either North Bondi Rocks, Gordon’s bay or way down south @ Oak Park. It was getting somewhat late (about 10am) so we decided North Bondi was going to be hard on the parking and we had done Gordon’s enough for the last couple of weeks. Also if it started to rain we wanted easy access to rock pools so we went with Oak park which is about 1km away from Cronulla and about 500 meters from Shelly beach (which has some really nice and safe rock pools).
The Dive at Oak Park was a new to us because most of the places we had gone to was within a closed bay. Oak park seemed more like the open ocean and was full of motor boats so we both kept our hands on the dive buoy and I was always keeping an eye on what was below the surface incase there were jelly fish or any other undesirables swimming close to us. Damir kept his head above water to ensure no boats zoomed by. I knew that if we had paddled out a few hundred meters and there were problems such as getting stung by blue bottles or getting caught in current it would not be an easy swim because we had no fins, so for this first dive we kept a safe but still decently far distance from the shore.
Entry was pretty easy in high tide, we just slowly put our buoy into the water on the left side of the rock pool and simply paddled out. Once we got out to the middle of the Oak park diving site the bottom was much more different then any of the previous sites I had gone to. There where lot of over hangs, lots of rocks and crevices, lots of different marine life and it was just more fun and interesting to dive.
As a result of this being our first time here, I wanted to get a feel for the underwater current and the sea life, along with what kind of obstacles were below so we pretty much stayed in 8-12 metre waters just to get a feel for the Oak Park dive site (Maybe next week we will try to conquer the 20 metre areas) . The Oak Park dive site was really fun and we met some friendly scuba divers so it was a great day with lots of others enjoying the Oak Park site. The over hangs were nice to see and there were many interesting fish swimming below them. When I get a chance to come to the site again I plan to dive in between the crevices and the over hangs.
I also finally got a chance to try out my camera pole. By looking at the videos I think my pole was to short, currently its about 60cm but I think it should be at least 1 – 1.2 meters so I can get better videos. We also managed to learn how to take better shots without moving and jerking the camera around to much so we are learning lots of different things on each and every dive 🙂
Other then that, it was a great fun day, no major mishaps, just a small cut on Damir’s knee as he was getting out of the Oak Park dive site (slipped on the rocks upon exit because it was low tide).
Images & videos above & below are directions from main city of sydney to the oak park dive site:
