Hi everyone,

I currently live in the center of North America but am relocating to the Gold Coast, Australia in a few months. I wanted to have easier access to the South Pacific and day-to-day diving right at home. Does anyone have any diving and UW photography advice or recommendations for Australia, specifically the Queensland area and potential shore dives with good photography subjects? Thanks!

Following - I will say that Australia was on my radar a few years ago but has fallen off it....

There is some great diving on the Australian east coast but it's very weather/swell dependent and the vis is up and down. IMO the very best access to diving is in Sydney, lots of dive sites just inside estuaries and shore accessible, particularly on the south side. There's also an active dive community who dive the shore sites regularly independently from dive shops who only run dives on weekends.

Brisbane/Gold coast you need to travel to get to many sites there is basically one shore dive at the gold coast seaway. Near the gold coast there is Julian Rocks, 2km offshore from Byron Bay, cook island offshore from tweed heads where there is also the shore dive at the tweed river. Many of these are boat dives which will run to $170-$250 for a double dive. You can also dive off Stradbroke Island where there is a manta cleaning station (summer only). it's subject to currents and swell and vis is up and down.

If you like Nudis, the Mooloolaba river has a shore dive with lots of them, Gary Cobb who runs the Nudibranch Central dives there and finds lots of nudis. I think diving is more accessible from the sunshine coast with a few dive operations running to reefs around that area.

Further down the NSW coast you have excellent dive spots at the Solitary islands off Coffs Harbour and Fish Rock Cave offshore from SW Rocks .

UW photo wise, a lot of the sites off the qld coast are wide angle sites, vis variable 5-20+m. Sydney a lot of macro sites, weedy sea dragons and other specialties. Vis varies from 2 up to an occasional 15-20m. My main experience is in Sydney, I've dived a few spots off the NSW coasts and once or twice did a day trip on the great Barrier Reef.

A good resource is Michael McFadyen's website, he has descriptions of dive sites around Sydney and up and down the coast:

https://www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info/viewpage.php?page_id=1

SEQ diving is mainly just complaining about the weather 😄 Offshore is incredible on its day, some of the best dives I've done anywhere in the world have been off Moreton/North Stradbroke. Unfortunately the wind and visibility are quite temperamental. Some days 30m viz and others a green washing machine. Echoing Chris, the shore diving here is not really on the same level as Sydney. That being said tweed river/gold Coast seaway/mooloolaba can be lovely, either as day or night dives. Plenty of interesting subjects to be found, even if photographic conditions are not always so dreamy.