This is a gallery of images I took on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef out of Cairns in April 2008. Being a newcomer to the underwater world and underwater photography, I thought a GBR trip was the perfect opportunity to hone some skills and give my new Canon 40D and Ikelite Housing a good workout. I realised during this trip just how much I have to learn, including how to Scuba dive! Snorkelling was pretty hard work on some of the dive sites we went to, but it was still a wonderful experience and I learnt alot about free diving.

The 3 day liveaboard cruise was on a boat called "Taka", and we travelled 250km north on the first night up to the Ribbon Reefs. The first dive site was 'Cod's Hole'. After two dives on 'Cod's Hole' we headed south to the 'Pixies Pinnacle'...awesome spot! That night we did our first night dive at 'Challenger Bay'. Day Two we visited 'Steve's Bommie' (where i did my first ever scuba...and now i'm totally hooked :), '2 and 2/3rds' reef later in the day, and a night dive at the 'Beer Gardens'. This was followed by a spectacular feed of prawns, which kind of felt wrong...but also sooo right! The last day we had two dives, the first at Hog's Breath (i think) and our last dive at Split Bommie, which was probably one of my favorite spots. Unfortunately it went too quick and i was just getting use to the whole underwater photography thing. All up though, it was a great trip..as the crew would say "Happy Days".