Fairy Firefly VX381 from the Australian Navy air base at HMAS Albatross crashed into Hare Bay at the back of Jervis Bay on the 27th of November 1956.

As far as I’m aware it is the only diveable aircraft wreck in Australia with the possible exception of a recently crashed IAI Westwind at Lord Howe Island. Follow this link (opens a pdf) for info on aircraft losses over water in NSW.

I’ve always been an aircraft buff, I grew up beside Cork airport in Ireland and used to be woken up many mornings by the Bell 212′s going in and out to the gas rigs, so I’ve known about and wanted to dive this wreck for some time.

It’s not that the wrecks a secret, far from it, and I’ve been to JB many times, its just that its an average dive for the locals, a spot where they might do an open water dive.

I wouldn’t go into the story of the aircraft, follow this link to Michael McFadyen’s website for the story, but here is a short and quickly put together video of my dive with some images of the Firefly that is on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at HMAS Albatross.

Trouble watching here? The embed appears to freeze after 25 seconds for some..you can go to the high def version here

My girlfriend, her parents who were visiting from Ireland and myself were taking a long weekend at Jervis Bay, so my trip wasn’t all diving, if it was I would have stayed on Oceantrek.

So I inquired with Sue at Crest diving as to how I could get out to the Firefly and she hooked me up with Paul a local Inspo diver who took me out with his buddy Ben. Thanks very much Paul!!

A few stills from the Firefly here;

The bottom is normally sand but we had lots of loose weed on my dive. I assume it was sent in by big swells a number of weeks ago and while the sandy bottom would have made the wreck stand out more for photography, the baby PJ’s of the area didn’t like the weed so that when we arrived we must have had over a dozen baby PJ’s sitting on the wing.

I slso got a dive in at Honeymoon Bay, a beautiful spot on the north side of Jervis Bay, to follow are a few shots mixed in with some from Clifton Garden’s on Saturday.

Not much else to add, pity the HMAS Adelaide didn’t get sunk this weekend. Its due to go down a couple of km’s off an exclusive beach on the central coast, but its sinking has been delayed by the local snobs who are very media savvy and have mounted a campaign based on environmental concerns. In reality its a case of NIMBY…not in my back yard, and why would they care, they are rich, they don’t need the rest of the community to benefit, grow, develop….well, the Adelaide will go down there, its not if, its when.

Later dudes..

This week Alex Mustard and Shannon Conway were in town catching up with my dive buddy Jayne, and on Thursday I was delighted to be able to go Weedy hunting with everyone to Kurnell.

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I have to say that it is great to be able to meet visiting Underwater Photographers and it is great to be able to show them part of what we have here in Sydney.

Aside from the obvious benefits of knowledge share and friendship, a visit is usually the motivation needed to dive somewhere you haven’t been for a while, and with the boys wanting to shoot Weedy Sea Dragons…well..we had to go to Kurnell.

Alas nowadays you really need to dive anywhere in Botany Bay on an incoming tide. This is thanks to the dredging for the port expansion at Port Botany which is due to continue for another 12 months at least.

Our first dive was on an in-coming, the second after high tide and I think Alex was happy he got his wide angle shots out of the way on the first dive and went macro second dive where the already poor viz got much worse with lots of fine sand suspended.

For me I went with the 100mm first dive and the 150mm second dive. I continue to work on the perfect “down the snout” shot, not there yet but getting closer.

I played with some shallow depth of field as well but with the viz so poor I needed to get really close and I actually had problems with over exposure (1/200th, F4.5, DS-125 on 1/8th power). I’ll leave the shallow dof play for another day.

I hope the boys, both of whom are OW-USS supporters, have a good trip to Vic and Tassie, I’m looking forward to seeing some of their shots.

Now, I’m off for a soak in the bath, my shoulders ache, I forgot how much walking (kitted up) you do at Kurnell….