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27/07/2007: "HERON ISLAND ......... The Night Dive 1969"

Possibly the most important picture I ever made. It changed my future for the next several years, or maybe forever.

Deepak Chopra teaches how to trace certain events back to a starting point.

I did so with this simple yet charming picture.

The 240V light belonged Don McAlpine a cinematographer with the then Commonwealth Film Unit, now called Film Australia.

Don and I were working around the clock, diving every four hours through several days and nights.

Support boat was Ron Isbell's Sea Hunt. We'd encountered a large hammerhead at Bloomfield Reef and filmed hatchling turtles racing for the ocean late at night on Heron Island. It was a sucessful trip.

Leading TV actor Janet Kingsbury with her husband and film director, Bob Kingsbury were in charge.

Back in Sydney, a top magazine publisher saw the above picture some months later, (as a double page color proof for one of his magazines) we suggested "Why don't you do a diving magazine"?

Roy Bisson a skindiving art director had selected the above picture and was in the same room.

"Would you be the editor"? I was asked on the spot.

"Yes", I replied without thinking for more than a split second.

It was good timing. 48 pages - with 16 in colour. The best printing standard available in Hong Kong. Artwork would be air freighted across, magazines shipped back a few weeks later.

Quality far-exceeded anything available in Australia. First issue went on sale in newsagents in December 1970.

A year later we were at Hawaii and Californian underwater film festivals promoting the new product.

It didn't last much longer than a total of three years. Hundreds of people wrote to us in that time.

We organised Australian Underwater Film Festivals and Coral Sea dive trips aboard Coralita - maybe the first live-aboard trips anywhere in the world.

American travel agents and other underwater cameramen followed our path to Marion and Saumarez Reefs chartering Coralita with their own groups.

Feature films soon used these locations for unique grey reef whaler shark footage.

The early 1970's was a busy and exciting time for diving in Australia.

(The late) Philippe Cousteau visited to learn about our magazine plans and granted an interview - something he'd avoided elsewhere.

Walter Starck PhD came to Australia from Florida via the South Pacific Islands and New Guinea. Traveling aboard his El Torito with Gerry Allen and family in 1972, to set-up a new diving and film making base - and stayed.

Colleagues John C Fairfax and Sandra Greentree joined the El Torito for 18 months visiting Lord Howe Island, New Zealand and the Solomon Islands while filming documentaries. Wade Doak from New Zealand DIVE magazine was part of the talented crew.