Snorkelling - Moore Reef

We went out to Moore Reef with a company called Reef Magic. Moore Reef is on the outer section of the great barrier reef and it's a patch reef, so after the previous post you'll know what that means.

So they tell you it's suitable for children but what they don't mention in their glossy leaflets is the thing about the sea-sickness on trips to the outer reef. They save information like that until you've actually boarded the boat and then offer to flog you tablets as $3 a throw, if you'll pardon the pun. Of course, being married to a medic I take anything I can get my hands on, but not everyone shares this enthusiasm and those that don't spent a good deal of time looking at the bottom of a brown paper bag (which you have to chuck over the side of the boat, you know, down wind, to avoid return to sender).

My advice if you are ever considering a trip to Australia and coming out to the barrier reef (and I think this blog is leading some people in that direction) is that you take two tablets on the way out and two more at lunchtime and don't even bother with the homeopathic rubbish like ginger or whatever it is but go for the hard stuff and you'll rock up feeling fine.

Anyway, the other thing they don't metion in the leaflets is that children under eight can't take sea sickness tablets and that your 1.5 hour journey to their so-called stable pontoon (not sitting on drill platforms as I had imagined but weighted down with a few ropes, which challenges the semantics of the word "stable" to say the least) will inevitably mean lots of sick bags and ill-looking babies and whinging toddlers, in Ella's case unable to say "I feel sick" and therefore resorting to "I got sore mouth" and "I got sore tummy" and "I want take top off".

Oh yes, and "waaaaaaaaah". And then you feel like the worst and most irresponsible parent in the world for dragging them thirty miles out to see in the hope you can find Nemo, which I didn't.

Still, I cut quite a dash in the wetsuit, at least, once I'd exchanged the size they gave me for one I could actually zip up over my thighs without calling for reinforcements. And no, it's not customary to go snorkelling in a lifejacket, I'm just a bloody great girl as the Aussies would say.