Diving SS Yongala of Ayr

I left Cairns together with Torstein (first Norwegian I met in six months...), and we drove to Ayr. We arrived at 5 pm in the afternoon and were lucky enough to dive the SS Yongala because of two cancellations. The next morning we packed up the gear and ready to go, but due to uncertainties about the weather we had to wait for a bit before the trip could start.

After landing the RIB from the beach and a 45 minute long rough boat trip we finally arrived at the dive site of the SS Yongala, a ship that sunk of the Queensland coast in 1911. During the dive we saw the bathtub, the toilets, and parts of the steam engine.

The marine life on this wreck was amazing, we saw a giant Elephant Tail Ray, Giant Cod, and heaps of other marine life.

While we had our surface interval there were several turtles catching a breath while we were having refreshments.

This was definitely a different and interesting dive!

For more information about the wreck, check out this web site.

http://www.timsaxon.co.uk/divesite_yongala.html

The SS Yongala

The position of the wreck, where it has been for 100 years.



The dive briefing before we went out on the RIB.

The RIB with 2 x 200 horsepower engines taking us out to the wreck in only 45 minutes.
The tractor landed the RIB from the beach.