| G’day from down under from one of HHUC’s first female NAUI instructors #2528 I stumbled across the HHUC website recently, and read with much interest all the information on the club’s past activities and invitation for club alumni to submit their ‘special memories’ for the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration. I was one of the first female members of the club and one of its first female NAUI instructors (#2528) and was heavily involved assisting Dr Don MacKenzie in the club’s training courses in the early 1970’s (starting even before women were officially allowed into Hart House). I have many fond memories of the time I spent as a member of HHUC. Some of the most vividmemories include: Toby As a newly-qualified diver, my first long weekend away with the club was a dive trip to Tobermory. I remember being quite perturbed by a sign posted in the motel room (“No black magic allowed”) – wondering what I had got myself into, until someone pointed out that it was just referring to wetsuit cement being prohibited in the rooms due to the mess it caused. Diving on the Waome One of my all-time favourite dive locations, but one of the things I most enjoyed was watching the elderly man who piloted the barge that took us out to the site (can’t remember his name, but he had very thick “coke bottle” glasses and appeared to not be able to see terribly well) – yet he was invariably able to find the wreck’s exact location without any trouble at all. [Editor’s note: The famous diveboat captain for the Waome dive was Francis Fowler.] Ice diving My one and only ice diving adventure with HHUC involved a hair-raising drive up Hwy 400 in dreadful freezing rain conditions, arriving at the assembly point (for travelling across to the island where we were staying for the night before the dive) to be met by a big sign stuck on the side of the divemaster’s van (DM was Dave Addyman, I think) reading “Ice breaking up; wear wetsuit booties”. This meant we had to carry all our gear across the ice, leaping from floe to floe, to reach our destination. The following morning, after much discussion about where and how to cut the hole in the ice, what shape it should be, etc., and much effort in actually getting through the ice, it turned out that the lake bottom drop-off where the hole had been cut was so gradual that the divers could not even stand up under the ice – had to crawl into deeper water to begin the dive. Cheers, Sue Heal (NAUI #2528) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
