Getting started in diving

I had shot across to Thailand during the Australian winter to take a break from work, but more importantly undertake my dive ticket. I had no idea about open water certification or any of the other terms used. Back in those days, I was working on employment contracts in open-cut mining and it was difficult for me to schedule time for a ticket as it was a week long course or went over a number of weekends - scheduling of dive courses were pretty much inflexible. Also, back in those days you jumped on a plane and headed away to work for 12 - 16 weeks on average, longer stints were frequently required as a matter of choice.

So I returned to Perth and headed back to work after a two-week hiatus on a new employment contract, it was going to be a while before I dived again so I gave up any notion of hitting the water for a while. Upon my return to Perth, I purchased a regulator, BCD and cylinder assembly and headed out on my old man's boat. 

Equipped with a newly purchased set of dive tables, I used an old sailing wetsuit leggings and football guernsey to hit the water - in winter, it was a tab fresh. My dive plan was simple, we would use the bottom sounder to scan the bottom for depth, I would consult the tables and my old man would start the engine and rev it in neutral five times to signal my time to ascend to the surface as I didn't have a dive watch at this stage or reliable depth gauge. 

I already had a mask, snorkel and fins as I had spent a considerable amount of time as a young guy skin diving, I was also equipped with a weight-belt, speargun, cray loop, catch bag and gidgee - so I had all the important equipment for diving in Perth water.  

As I progressed, I decided to purchase a proper dive watch (that failed within 10 dives), a depth gauge, a hood and finally a two-piece wetsuit after about a year of being really cold and the divemaster on a charter boat asking me, "why the f@#k are you wearing that in the water?"  

With more neoprene, I now had to purchase some more weights as a two-piece 5mm wetsuit was very buoyant with an aluminium cylinder. As I progressed, I became more professional and took the tables underwater with me and no longer relied upon my old man to rev the engine up and I had a little more control of my maximum depth.

When I finally got serious, I headed back to the dive shop and purchased an Aladin Sport computer with a better SPG, depth gauge and compass console. The dive shops dictated what equipment you purchased back then and the configuration you wore, you had no say in the matter. It wasn't until I was diving in Europe that I finally broke down that console and finally had myself a wrist mounted computer - a significant improvement.

Being a relatively frugal person, that's code for a cheap bastard, I never relied upon a single shop to dictate my equipment purchases. I bought my equipment in a series of stages with regular purchases as equipment configurations were very regional and dictated by the dive shops that really suited their needs and not the needs of the consumer. 

I also never thought I would dive so much or so often and didn't want a huge outlay of equipment sitting around gathering dust in the shed. I thought my trip to Thailand was going to be my one and only overseas diving adventure, I was wrong there too as I now dive more overseas than I do in Perth - that I would have never considered this to be a reality when I received my original c-card.