Does anyone know if it’s possible to do a day-trip to the Barrier Reef from Cairns that allows you to do glass-bottomed/submersible or snorkelling or diving on the same trip? I.e. if, once you got out there, you struggled with the diving you could do the glass-bottomed boat?

The girlfriend has a slight fear of water so I don’t want her to miss out if she gets all the way out there and finds she can’t go in. She’s determined to do it though!

FWIW I think she’ll be fine once she’s under if diving, it’s the bit where you’re on top of the water I think will be the worst.

From memory yes, there’s one of the main operators who have a big floating thing out there that has all of that. No idea what they are called though sorry – yes i can having googled, Quicksilver.

Thanks – that looks perfect, pity it’s in Port Douglas. Suppose we could get a taxi up there if it’s the best option!

Port Douglas is much nicer than Cairns

I did a try dive thing on the barrier reef from Agnes Water, it was quite cool but not a patch on snorkelling from the beach on Ningaloo Reef in WA, which was amazing. Obviously if you are in cairns you can’t just nip to Ningaloo, but if you can get there it’s amazing.

Wot BillMc said.

This goes from Cairns https://reeftrip.com/tour/1-day/great-barrier-reef-pontoon/

Try Google, it’s this amazing search engine.

Thanks all. I did have a look on google, but thought before investigating the plethora of options further that I’d see if anyone had first-hand experience 🙂

There are loads of companies doing the Quicksilver thing. Can’t remember who we used but it wasn’t Quicksilver, but a very similar operation. They all descend on to the same spots anyway as there are severe restrictions on where large scale commercial operations can access the reef, so you’ll end up at the same spot as Quicksilver and all the rest.

Back in 2007 the missus and I did the Quicksilver trip out from Port Douglas. It was brilliant.

While out there, you could do a glass bottom sub trip, or introductory scuba trip, or both. We did the sub together, and I went diving afterwards.

Highly recommended. Can’t for the life of me remember the price, but we were on a ‘once in a lifetime’ holiday, so didn’t really care.