Bill Silvester, Lennox Head
One hot summers day in 1960 four Victorians drove a Holden sedan to Surfers Paradise for a holiday. We did not like what we found there as we were looking for somewhere we could dive and spear fish. Surfers even then was busy and we had nowhere to stay. Bob Hooper and I looked at a map of northern NSW, saw that there were a group of rocks not too far offshore. These rocks looked like an ideal place for a dive.
We had built homemade SCUBA gear back in Melbourne and just needed to find somewhere ideal to use them. The Julian Rocks at Byron Bay beckoned us, so we left the Gold Coast and off to Byron Bay we drove. First finding a low-cost camp site behind the sand dunes at Clarke’s Beach we booked in for the night. At that time a mighty athletic sportsman, Hal Hankin, owned a shoe repair and sports store in Jonson street. He was one of Byron Bay’s most talented long board surfers, but also owned his own boat to go fishing. By luck for us Hal agreed to take us out in his boat and let us SCUBA dive the Julian Rocks but only at 6:30am the next day. A warm morning with just a light northerly breeze blowing, Hal drove his boat to The Julian Rocks to then anchor at the reef known as the Nursery. Hal pointed eastwards to a place he called the Cod Hole and indicated that it was there where all the big fish were. We took spearguns and swam in the appointed direction.
Gingerly, and a little nervously, Bob and I swam by snorkel to the shallow edge of this big cave we could see from the surface, its large opening facing the shore. Everywhere there were just masses of fish to be seen from large jewfish, snapper, mulloway and many other species. By agreement we switched to SCUBA and swam down to the edge of the hole and peered in. We were met by at least five giant black cod. They showed no fear, and as we peered over the edge of the opening, these goggle-eyed giants swam towards us. We had never before seen such giants with wide open mouths goggling at us. Not one of these giants was under two metres long and very heavy in build. They were not scared by us, just curious. We were more anxious to see these cod than they were to see us. I could have touched one of them on the nose – but didn’t. These giants do not exist in Victoria, and we were just enthralled by this experience. It was two very excited divers that returned to Hal’s boat, who in the meantime had caught a large snapper.
The experience to dive at the Julian Rocks was to have such an impact upon me that we went there each Christmas for three more years. I wanted so much to go to live in Byron Bay, and in 1973, Sharon, now my wife of 50 years, bought out the shop that Hal Hankin once owned from John ‘Ponto’ Bell. (See Down Under Byron). Following that first experience with the giant cod, one by one they disappeared by the hands of spearfishermen, including me. I realised that the Julians Rocks was a treasure trove of where two currents meet, north and south, that it did indeed need to be protected from further destruction by spearfishing. I gave up spearfishing there and then and took up the underwater camera. By this meeting of currents, the Julian Rocks attracts manta rays and leopard sharks in summer, and the now protected grey nurse sharks in winter, thanks to Valarie Taylor’s efforts to make the sharks a protected species.
It then became locked firmly in my mind that this precious meeting of both tropical and temperate was indeed unique. We had to protect it from being destroyed by man’s stupidity and selfishness. The Julian Rocks epitomises this perfectly. It is a short boat ride to get there and once underwater the experience can be breathtaking. A cameraman’s delight.
The southern side of the Julian Rocks is also a diver’s paradise for soft corals of many hues. When the late Neville Coleman dived the southern side he found, photographed and named at least eight more new species of nudibranchs. They are there in abundance. Keep looking! You will find them.
Now over 50 years later the whole of Byron Bay has become a protected zone. The inner reefs such as Little Reef and the Old Man Reef have also flourished. On a good day it is a delight and safe to enjoy, with large schools of yellowtail, blue groper, blue devil fish, and many species of shellfish such as white and tiger cowries, yellow and pink volutes, soft corals. Even Victorian species such as the blue devil fish can be found there. There is also another small fish swim through cave to be found.
The hard cover book Down Under Byron fully details all of Cape Byron’s reefs with beautiful colour photos. David Bryant, my great friend and superb photographer, laid out the book and included a large number of his underwater photos. I could not have completed the book without his help.