A few weeks ago I took the Friday off work and headed down south to Dunsborough with the boat in tow to do some (long overdue) diving on the HMAS Swan. It was a trip that had been planned a few weeks earlier with my brother. Having a quick look through my dive log, it appears that the last time I dived the Swan was way back on the 9th January 2005. Up until now, I had dived the Swan no fewer than 17 times, but I had never gone this long between dives. Between 1998 and the start of 2005, I had been diving the Swan at least once a year. So over two years since my last visit, I was really looking forward to getting back and to see how much she'd changed.

The HMAS Swan is a River Class Frigate Destroyer which served in the Australian Navy for 26 years from 1970 to 1996. When in service, the Swan carried 250 officers and seamen. The HMAS Swan is 112.8 meters long, has a beam of 12.5 meters, a height of 23 meters and a full load displacement of 2700 tonnes. She was decommissioned on the 13th of September 1996 and was given as a gift to the Western Australian Government, who in turn gifted the HMAS Swan to the Shire of Busselton to sink her as a dive wreck. Over the next year, volunteers prepared the wreck for sinking, taking out anything that could be hazardous to divers and the marine environment. On December 14th 1997, the HMAS Swan was eventually scuttled 1.3 nautical miles off Point Piquet Meelup. She now lies upright at a depth of 30 meters in the waters of Geographe Bay.

We'd arrived in Dunsborough probably a little bit later than we expected. The traffic getting out of the city was slow going for a while due to a nasty accident involving a motorcycle on the freeway. Once that cleared it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way down to Dunsborough. Our first stop in Dunsborough was Cape Dive. To dive the Swan on a private vessel you need to purchase a dive pass which, among other places, is available at the dive shop. We also needed to hire another tank. Due to the lack of diving this year, I totally overlooked the test dates on 2 of my cylinders. The day before we were due to head to Dunsborough, I realised that 2 of my 3 cylinders had been out of test for over a month. And what's worse is that they were empty, so I couldn't even use them for one dive!!!

By the time we sorted out the dive pass and gear, and after stopping briefly on the way to the dive site to watch a dolphin after it showed us some aerial acrobatics right in front of the boat, we splashed into the water pretty much right on 3pm. Even after diving the Swan no less than 17 times, I still got quite excited as I started the descent. David had only dived the Swan once before. We didn't have too much of a plan for this dive, other than to head up to the bow. David saw a classic photo of the bow in the dive shop and made mention of it, so the bow was an obvious place to start. I also wanted to head down to the magazine room, which is also towards the bow. We actually descended onto the top of the bridge and then headed straight to the bow. After spending a few minutes hanging just off the bow and looking back towards the rest of the ship, we descended to 30 meters and made our way along the bottom of the hull to find the opening to the magazine room on the port side. The last time I was in the magazine room was on a night dive with Rob a few years ago. This time wasn't nearly as spooky though. A brief look around the magazine stacks, we then exited through a hole in the starboard side of the wreck and slowly made our way back along the hull and entered the wreck again through another hole at about 25 meters. We spent the next 10 minutes or so inside the wreck before existing somewhere around the mid ship and made our way back up towards the bridge. We spent the last few minutes of the dive hanging around the main mast at 9 meters watching a few of the resident batfish that have made the wreck their home.

It was now time to get the boat on the trailer and head out to our accommodation for the weekend - Bunker Bay Resort. David had received a free weekend stay at the resort almost a year earlier. That is one of the reasons we were in Dunsborough, it needed to be used. When he suggested taking the boat down and going diving for a weekend and to stay at the Bunker Bay Resort I just couldn't really say no. It was quite funny rocking up to a 5 Star resort towing a boat with my brother for a "weekend away for two". Thankfully they obeyed our request for a room with two beds.

The next morning we planned to be back to the wreck around 9am. All good in theory, but after a late dinner and a few beers sitting around the fireplace at the resort the night before, those plans had slipped away from us. Instead, we eventually hit the water again at around 10.50am. This dive we decided to head towards the stern of the ship. This is where we went on David’s only previous dive on the Swan. As usual, the were plenty of small snapper hanging around under the hull. We then continued on along starboard side of the hull and entered a hole that I had not before been into to. In here we found what was assumed to be the propeller shaft. From here we ascended through a small hatch to the deck above and continued inside the wreck to mid-ship. On this dive we took my camera along. David wanted to try his hand at some underwater photography. After taking a few snaps myself, I handed the camera over to David. Upon reviewing the photos once on the boat, it seemed that David is pretty good at underwater photography. Not one of my photos turned out good at all, but David took quite a few excellent photos. Most were in focus – none of mine were. I put it down to beginners luck. Just before the end of the dive, I came across a nice wobbegong shark lazing on the deck. I signaled the find to David who immediately thought it was a shark swimming around. After looking out into the blue for a while, he eventually saw the wobbie and took a few photos of it (which turned out pretty good). We then went up and checked out the bridge for a few minutes and made our way back up main mast were David took a few photos of the resident batfish before making our safety stop. To date this had been the best dive I had every done on the Swan.

The next few hours were spent trying to catch some salmon close in to the shore. This proved to be quite an unsuccessful exercise. After admitting defeat, we decided to head back to the resort, stopping on the way to grab a bite to eat at the bakery and to get a few refreshments for later on that night.

We woke up the final morning to a cloudy day. We wanted to make a third dive before heading home. After having a few battery issues the day before, we headed straight to the service station to get a new battery before stopping off at the dive shop to pick up a tank. Once out at the wreck, we found that the surface conditions had changed a fair bit from what we had seen over the previous two days. The wind had picked up and there was a bit more swell running, but this wasn’t about to stop us from making a third dive. We knew that once under the water, the conditions on the surface wouldn’t have changed the conditions below much. As I mentioned earlier, the previous dive was probably the best dive I had ever done on the Swan, so we decided to follow a similar plan. For the first part of the dive we retraced a lot of what we did on the second dive, but instead of exiting the wreck mid-ship, we continued inside the wreck all the way to the bow. This was cool. I’d only every done this once before but in the opposite direction. Again we entered into parts of the wreck that I had never seen before. Towards the end of the dive we came across another wobbegong, but this time inside the wreck itself. As David mentioned later, it would have been easy to descend through a hatch straight onto the wobbie if you didn’t have a good look before hand. After ending the dive, it was time to head back to the dive shop to drop of the hire tank and make our way back to Perth.

After the first dive for the weekend, I didn’t think the wreck had changed that much since 2005. The one thing that was noticeable, is that the wreck is definitely starting to lean more to it’s port side. After the second dive though, I realized that there has been considerable more growth on the wreck over the past 2 years. Hopefully I won’t have to wait another 2 years before I get a chance to see any new changes.