"Eat. Sleep. Dive." by David King

Eat. Sleep. Dive. 

A simple, monastic existence for 15 days.

Breakfast at 7.30am, freediving from around 10.30am to 2.30pm, return to shore, wash gear, rest and recover and maybe do some shopping in the local markets until dinner at 7.30pm. In bed, exhausted by 10.30pm.


Next day, repeat. No TV, no newspapers, no social media.


The only variations to the schedule were breathing and strength exercises and some pool work. The staff of Bali Reef Divers Resort were more than happy to let us drop a weight belt to the bottom of their 2m pool and do static breathholds with reflections of palm trees dancing on the surface above.


This was our life in Tulamben, Bali over two weeks in July-August 2023.


The diving was spectacular. Breath-taking. Mind-boggling.


From six or seven metres of visibility in Port Phillip Bay to 15 – 25 metres of viz off the north-east coast of Bali where the water temperature was between 26 and 29 degrees every day.


From shivering in 9 – 12 degrees on land and wearing thick socks and roll-neck jumpers in Portarlington to pulling on a pair of shorts and singlet in Tulamben. And that’s what they call ‘winter’ over there.


We only had one bad dive at 3pm one day when the tide was out. Like swimming inside a pie. But the next day made up for it.



The wreck of the USAT Liberty – a US transport ship torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942 - is the main attraction. It’s roughly 122 metres long, broken up and scattered over a sloping seabed in depths ranging from 5 metres at the top of the up-thrusting stern to around 30 metres at the end of the flattened bow.



You reach it by swimming maybe 50m out from shore. The shoreline drops off sharply on this coast and causes a strong inshore break which can be hard to get through given the slope is comprised of loose volcanic stones and rocks. But once out there, the magic starts.




Schools of brightly-coloured fish flitter through dancing sunbeams, and weave in and out of rusty structures overgrown with corals and sponges.



This is a popular and over-dived site. Bubbles from dozens of Scuba divers often make it seem like swimming in a champagne glass. Whole squads of snorkellers and their guides jostle for space on the surface – a nuisance when you’re preparing to dive.


But down there is a wreck diver’s paradise - an eerie underworld of jangling sunbeams, surreal twisted, broken and collapsed structures, and a mesmerising parade of marine life.


Eerie because the sand all around the wreck is black, casting a kind of permanent twilight, courtesy of the local volcano Mount Agung which looms over Tulamben and the dive sites like a Damocles Sword.


Indeed the township derived its name from the word batulambih, which roughly translates as "many stones", a reference to the destructive eruptions by Mount Agung that have affected this part of Bali from time to time. The beach in Tulamben is entirely covered with large and small smooth stones. The modern name evolved over time, first to "Batulamben" and finally settling on the contraction Tulamben ("batu" means "stone" in Indonesian).


Some memories of our dives: Andrea perched on a metal structure eight metres down, sweeping her hand through her hair like a model in a shampoo ad as I dived down filming her with our GoPro.


Swimming down through the hatch of a former cargo hold, transfixed at nine-and-a-half metres between the light of the surface and the dark of the hold. I hung in the sunbeams with arms spread-eagled and ankles crossed like I’d been crucified in the light as Andrea glided down filming me.


Lounging against a pillar in the gloomy cargo hold 11 metres down with a large Napoleon wrasse circling around me. I could just see the arrogant bastard thinking: “And what do you think you’re doing in MY territory, Surface-Dweller?”


But I gave him the eye: “I know what you do when the sharks come out to feed, don’t I? Skulk away in your hide-away, don’t you?” Napoleon gives a disgruntled grunt and swims off.


Looking up to see Andrea distantly silhouetted against the surface with a school of blue and gold Fusiliers swirling between us.


Kneeling on the seabed with the pyramid-like stern section towering over me. Gliding through a maze of metal struts and beams and finding holes in the structure to exit from for a swift return to surface.



Bursting through the surface, floating on our backs to gulp down huge breaths of warm tropical air between dives.



There are other dives around Tulamben. Artificial reefs in seven to 12 metres of water only 15 – 20 metres from the beach.



Corals gardens with huge staghorn and brain corals and a large open-topped species of sponge which reminded me strongly of the leathery egg-cases from the which the face-huggers sprang in Ridley Scott’s sci fi film Alien.



We excitedly planned to do an imitation Alien shot with one of us kneeling at the side of the sponge, peering down into the opening as the character played by John Hurt did before the face-hugger sprang at him. Hopefully, nothing would spring at us.



But alas, we lost the GoPro and all its footage. Maybe it just didn’t want to come back to cold Victorian waters, but it somehow got separated from the wrist strap. The tether between the camera and the strap broke without either of us knowing it until too late.


For over an hour, we swam and dived in search of it over a wide area where we thought it must have dropped to the bottom, but no luck.


We returned to shore utterly exhausted and demoralised. All that wonderful footage – gone.


Meanwhile, there was still a few days of our Bali adventure to go and the Japanese wreck to dive off Amed, some 40 minutes along a narrow, winding coastal road from Tulamben.


This is a small but stunningly beautiful wreck (courtesy of the astonishing variety of marine life which almost hides it from view) which lies in four to nine-and-a-half metres of water off yet another steeply sloping beach comprised of volcanic stones and rocks. Visibility at the shallowest end can be non-existent but swim a few metres deeper and all becomes clear.


Being keen wreck divers, Andrea and I could have spent another hour exploring this wreck in spite of having swam over and around it at various depths several times. Every dive seemed to reveal something we hadn’t noticed before.


We had hoped to dive with the manta rays off Nusa Penda, but time flew by exploring the wrecks and there was none left for what would have been a whole expedition in itself.


We were bitterly disappointed over losing the GoPro and the footage we had managed to get.

But we rallied ourselves and vowed to come back next year with another camera and a stronger tether.


As Andrea put it: “We’ll be even Older and Bolder!”


Back in Portarlington, Victoria, Australia, rugged up in jumpers, jeans and scarves, we can barely believe we’ve experienced what we just have - a tropical wreck diver’s paradise only five-and-a-half hours away where we left a note on the bed of our resort room reading:

“Old’N’Bold Freediving Adventures 

occupied this room from 

22 July to 06 August. 

We had a blast and we’ll be back.

 Thanks for everything. 

David & Andrea.”