Sometimes, the best travel experiences are the ones you didn’t plan. A perfect example of this: five days of free scuba diving while I volunteered as a “hostie” on a recent trip to Cairns, Australia. In this post, I’ll explain what a hostie is, and how you too can dive for free at the Great Barrier Reef.
While this post will be of great interest to all my diving friends who like to save money, you may not be as interested if you don’t dive. No worries – I won’t be offended if you just scroll to the bottom to look at some of my photos of the Great Barrier Reef 🙂
What’s a hostie?
In Cairns, a hostie is essentially a volunteer who does the thankless jobs such as cleaning dishes, changing linens, and cleaning bathrooms on a boat in exchange for free diving, accommodation, and food. This can be on a day trip boat or a liveaboard (I was on a liveaboard). In case it wasn’t obvious – you have to be a certified diver in order to be a hostie.
I don’t know all of the companies that use hosties, but Deep Sea Divers Den definitely does and I think Pro Dive Cairns does as well. It’s probably worth getting in touch with other dive operators based in Cairns to see if they need volunteers as well.
The dive operators don’t advertise this on their websites, so most people that do it are backpackers who heard about it through word-of-mouth. Divers Den also had fliers advertising the opportunity on their boats, but in order to find out by seeing those you would already have had to be a paying customer.
So how did I find out? Luck, basically. I did my PADI Divemaster Course with Divers Den and found out about their need for hosties during the course. I also happened to have an extra few days at the end of my trip so it worked out perfectly.
You don’t seem to need to schedule your hostie stint very far in advance; most of the other hosties I met only heard of the opportunity after they arrived in Cairns. If you want to schedule it further in advance, maybe try emailing the operators. However, I’m not sure they’re willing to plan anything very far ahead of time.
Before you rush to find a hostie gig though, you should read the next section…
Disclaimer: it’s hard work!
I got to do 4 dives a day as a hostie. But in exchange for the free scuba diving, I was working during pretty much all other waking hours. Have a look at the daily schedule below.
| 5:45am | Wake up |
| 6am | Dive 1 |
| 7am | Collect/clean dirty cups |
| 7:15am | Start doing dishes |
| 7:30am | Breakfast |
| 7:45am | Vacuum; do dishes |
| 9am | Dive 2 |
| 10am | Collect/clean dirty cups; clean handrails and windows |
| 10:20am | Make beds |
| 12pm | Clean bathrooms |
| 12:30pm | Lunch |
| 12:45pm | Clean dishes; finish cleaning bathrooms; vacuum rooms; vacuum dining room; set up dining room |
| 2:30pm | Help with passenger transfer; clean dishes; clean dining room |
| 3:15pm | Set dinner tables |
| 3:30pm | Dive 3 |
| 5:30pm | Help chef |
| 6pm | Dinner |
| 6:15pm | Clean dishes |
| 7pm | Dive 4 |
| 8pm | Dessert while cleaning dishes, dining room, and galley |
In case you don’t believe me, here’s a photo I took of the schedule:
The hostie schedule for Ocean Quest.
Why I think it’s worth it
All I have to say is: free scuba diving! Just look at the photos!
By the way, you can see all my favorite photos from the trip here and watch my favorite videos here.
Tiny, translucent anemone shrimp.
School of bumphead parrotfish. Each fish is over 2 feet long!
The bumphead parrotfish head on.
A pair of clownfish in their anemone.
A different type of clownfish.
Garden eels.
A rather toothy grouper.
Octopus.
The same octopus 5 seconds later.
Pink anemonefish and their stunning anemone.
Pipefish, a close relative to seahorses.
Saddled pufferfish.
Shrimp.
Jellyfish.
Fishes everywhere!
Total dives this trip (including divemaster training and dives while I was a hostie): 44
Total dives: 92
To read PADI Divemaster Course in Cairns, Australia (Part 1), click here!
To read PADI Divemaster Course in Cairns, Australia (Part 2), click here!
To read PADI Divemaster Course in Cairns, Australia (Part 3), click here!
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