It was eerie, indeed, to swim silently along the deck railing and up a stairwell where once sailors ran. And then to drift in through a window in the bridge and float around the main compass like a ghost where once naval captains with binoculars bellowed orders to the other ranks elsewhere on the ship.
The navigator’s chair is still there, though coral is slowly building up. An angelfish glides by taking a cursory interest in what was once a proud part of the Australian Navy. Now HMAS Swan it is sunk in 32 metres of water off the coast of Dunsborough, 200kms south of Perth.
It makes a brilliant dive. You can peer in where once sailor slept. You can see rusting machinery and look into the black hold where once munitions were stored. The warship grey is hardly visible now, after three years of coral growth. The 112-metre-long ship also provides a home for a huge range of fish. When I dived it a school of pufferfish had congregated around the bow. I had never seen them school before.
The Swan was scuttled in 1997 and has since become a major tourist attraction, with more than 10,000 divers a year visiting the site. It was sunk for that purpose – unlike its sister ship Torrens, which was torpedoed in an exercise of the Western Australian coast last year.
There were other possibilities upon the decommissioning of the Swan after 26 years’ service, like a floating museum, restaurant or shelter for the homeless.
Well, it is now the home of about 10 times the number of species of fish (and several hundred times the absolute number) that used to be at the site, as a food chain of life has been built up first with tiny creatures attaching themselves to the metal rather than drifting past on the current.
The Swan is unlike a lot of wreck diving. Usually it is in the nature of wrecks to be in places where there are hellish seas and tricky currents – ships usually no not get wrecked in calm protected waters. But with a deliberate sinking, a sheltered site can be selected. The Swan is in Geographe Bay, sheltered from the stormy blast of the Roaring Forties. Also, this ship is upright and in one piece – frequently wrecks are broken up or on their side. (I once dived the wreck of a car ferry in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico where family cars and mechandise trucks had been strewn over the sea floor.)
The success of the Swan, a destroyer now creating a haven for life underwater, has spurred the Navy to repeat the exercise with two DDG frigates. HMAS Perth is being cleaned up by volunteers in Albany and will be sunk next year. If they are going to be sunk in coastal waters, they have to be cleaned of lead, fuels, cabling and other things that might snare divers. And HMAS Hobart is destined for South Australia.
After diving the Swan, Margaret River is close by with its wineries and limestone caves, you can bushwalk between cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin or surf the enormous waves at Yallingup (or in my case watch them.)