renth

Dive medicals in Australia are super strict. Any hint of asthma and forget it!

marco121068

You only have to do a medical in the UK before starting your dive training IF you tick yes on any of the medical boxes on the self cert form.

Caroline G

Both my husband any myself did Open Water in the UK. I didn't have to have a medical as didn't tick any of the health 'problem' boxes on the form. My husband did have to have a medical as he ticked one of the boxes.

If you do have a slight problem take a copy of your medical when you go diving to avoid any problems with going out on trips. We went to the red sea & had to get the dive shop where we did the Open water to fax a copy of the medical (as it was held on our training records at their shop) to the diving centre in Eilat.

Take a look at the cave diving at Mount Gambier (525km west of Melbourne & 450km SE of Adelaide & only 25km north of the Southern Ocean. You need to be experienced & have a permit for most of the area. It looks pretty impressive. You can snorkel at Ewen's Pond.

yamahaha

I had to have a medical when I did my BSAC training years ago. Personally I felt having to get a Chest X-ray was taking it a little far. I could understand it if I had asthma and they wanted to make sure I had no obvious lung problems which effectively means you shouldnt dive. (Having asthma does NOT mean you cannot dive by the way) However for PADI as far as I know as long as you tick all the right boxes you can dive. You are in effect resposible for your own actions...refreshing huh?
Basically if you are unsure about your swimming ability then you should NOT do it. (In theory you dont even need to be able to swim which sounds crazy but its true) Ive ben in situations where ive had to fin/swim strongly because of strong onshore winds pushing me towards the coastline which you dont want in a large swell believe me, you could get smashed up badly on rocks!
You must be sure of both your health and abitlity to cope with underwater but most af all surface incidents (which are also far more common and will happen at some point!). The more confident and able you are, the more likely you are to survive a potentially fatal incident.
I dont mean to sound dramatic but diving is the easy part, its surviving the unknown that is the hard part and you should be as prepared as possible for these unknowns. Enjoy

spottydog

FYI BSAC have now also dropped the mandatory medical in favour of a have you ever had any of the following form and only require a medical if you tick yes. In the UK if you tick no then you only need an HSE medical for Divemaster and above.