diving finds from Australia

[warith]

I am new to this forum, so I thought I'd start with a photo of the result of a recent dive form coastal NSW, Australia.

The best find was certainly the 26oz Pocock codd (it wasn't mint, there is a crack on the back) and the three other codd bottles (Tooheys and Tooths), however I also really like the group of ginger beers (the best being a T.Field & Sons, unfortunately broken). I was also really chuffed with the Schweppes torpedo and the taller, thinner beer bottle is a "Reschs Sydney Brewery" bottle, a reasonably hard bottle to find, so I'm told. This dive was certainly my dive yet.

I'm trying to collect bottles from Newtown, Australia (a suburb in central Sydney), and if you have any bottles from here I'd like to hear from you and perhaps purchase/trade for any 'spare' ones you may have (including damaged bottles).


regards
Warith

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[warith]

eep! sorry, I read that we were expected to keep them under 200k (which I'd done). Sorry.
W.

 

[Bottleman]

WOW, nice dive! Looks like they could use a good ride in a bottle tumble though. I have never been bottle diving but have always wanted to. Do you know how they got under water though? Were they just tossed in a river or lake when they were done drinking them or was it an old dump that was later cover my a lake?

~~Tom

 

[warith]

Hey Tom,

Most of these bottles came up almost mint (just dull, which baby oil hides) with a short (and very careful) weak acid bath. I had swum along looking for them on the surface, where they had been for 80years+ and many had barnacles and seaweed growing on them. I've found quite a few in rougher water that really could do with a tumble, unfortunately bottle polishing in Australia is very expensive ($60 or more, plus postage), and as most of the bottles we find are worth half this, it's not something I've yet investigated.

Nearly all my bottles are found in places where people used to simply throw their rubbish; marine tips, so to speak. Good places are uncommon and hard to find, they are also quickly exhausted. This particular dive was my best ever, probably half my dives (or more) I return with only a few bottles that I simply recycle (trying to 'do my part'), and most of the other dives I find nothing really worth keeping (I give these to friends mostly, or sell). But every now and then!

For me it's the diving experience that I love (as well as the bottles); just in the past year while looking for bottles I've swum with about five sharks (tiny ones), a green turtle, a HUGE estury codd (about a meter long and more than that round, it would have been at least twice my weight); numerous sea horses and a few blue ringed octopus! Even on the dives that I find nothing to keep, it's still a lot of fun!


Warith