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Towards the end of my travels along the East coast of Australia, I found myself precariously poised on the edge of a diving vessel, looking out on to the wide-open ocean that played host to one of the greatest natural wonders mankind has ever had the pleasure of destroying – the Great Barrier Reef. I was top heavy. The silver scuba tank strapped to my back was threatening to topple me as I tried to rock in time with the waves. My peripheral vision was blocked by the black silicone of the diving mask that was suctioned to my face. It left me with tunnel vision, at the end of which I failed to see much light. The two shoulder straps of my BCD had been fastened uncomfortably tight by a severe looking blonde dive master. At no point, during the time she was equipping me for my first experience of scuba diving, did she do me the honour of looking directly at me. Instead, she took to staring at a spot somewhere just above my head. It wasn’t through negligence, she was just on autopilot, her body following unwritten instructions drilled into her by daily usage. She never addressed me directly, favouring instead to converse with her fellow dive masters with the bouncing vowels that told me she was a native Dutch speaker. I could not breathe. It was nothing to do with the large buckle that had been clipped around my belly or the other, smaller fastening that was clasped across my chest. They left plenty of room for the long, slow, diver breaths that I had been taught about in my induction on the boat. It was nothing to do with the comically bulbous regulator protruding from my mouth and providing me with oxygen rich air that would keep me alive under the water. My greatest fear is the ocean. I am yet to find an arachnophobe that voluntarily spent their time and money rehabilitating tarantulas. I am yet to find an agoraphobic who willingly became a walking tour leader and spends their holidays hiking across heather strewn moorland. And yet here I was, my greatest fear at my feet, preparing to dive in. I have no memory of how I got into the water but as my instructor filled my BCD with air, keeping my stunned body afloat, I assumed that I must have jumped. My legs hung below me tingling with fear and adrenaline. I tucked them up under me for safety. A wave was approaching. It came slowly towards me – the familiar oncoming wash of panic for which I braced myself. The wave would break over me and salt water would flush my eyes and mouth, I would spit and choke and my chest would heave and my legs would instinctively kick out below me, I would propel myself haphazardly back to the boat, rip off my mask and apologise for wasting everybody’s time but Scuba diving just wasn’t for me. The wave washed over me and hit my regulator. No salt water entered my mouth, I breathed in clean salt-less air. My eyes did not sting, my chest did not heave, my legs stayed tucked under me, for safety. My instructor pointed downwards with her thumb and I descended into my greatest fear. There is a stillness in the eye of a storm. There was a peace in the eye of my fear. The ocean hugged me in a way that it never had done before. It embraced me, cradled me in a warm bath, welcomed me to the underwater world full of experiences and memories that I would never had known had I stayed on dry land. As I breathed slowly out, I felt any remaining fear dissipate into the stream of bubbles rising to the surface above my head. The serenity was penetrated by a snap. In the heat generated by the boats above, a bleached arm of coral had broken away from the reef and was tumbling, ghostly white, across a barren sand patch, a monument to the sea grass meadows of years past. At once I realised. The ocean had far more to fear from me, than I from it.