darwin 2 - Blogabond

Day 1
Tess and I are on our own and it is sad we are not travelling with Cognac and Golden Legend, but the adventurers are off to Point Blaze 57miles from Darwin. I often wonder where the names come from for these places, in the old days when everyone was brown nosing to the royals back in the old country, the discoverers of Terrus –Australis and the subsequent headlands and bays, would race back to the palace and while boot licking tell his and her majesty their names were now embedded in history. This of course would give the brown noser a ticket for a life of drunkenness and whoreing.
Now Point Blaze is named from a different type of discoverer, this discoverer would have the inclination to have disastrous effects wherever they went, my reckoning is the bloke who named this point set up camp, got into the piss and set the place on fire, now a passing ships captain would say “that fool of a man has set the Point Ablaze”, by the time the name got back to England they would have dropped the a and it became Point Blaze....
So we travel down to the Point and arrive at 7pm. There was no wind to speak of and we had to motor all the way, we didn’t bother fishing as we have no room in the fridge or freezer for any more tucker, it’s still hot as buggery but we refrain from turning on the aircon and sleep on the back deck under the moon.
Day 2
Last leg until we cross Bonaparte Bay which can also be known as Blown Apart Bay, Tess is a bit pensive about the crossing as the Gulf crossing is still on her mind. It ends up a nice day not much wind again so we motor sailed all the way, there are heaps of fishermen in these parts plus the odd charter boat, they all chat on the radio about how their fishing is going.
Our anchorage tonight is Scott Head, we came across another catamaran at Scott Head and they are on their way back to Darwin from the Kimberly’s, they wished they were going again as it is so beautiful, it would have been nice to have someone travel with us across the Bay but thats life.
Tess is cooking up a storm for dinner as the next 2 days we will be sailing some 150miles without stopping, the wind seems to drop off at night so we will just drift along with the tide and see where we end up in the mornings. Tess reckons I’m losing the plot as I keep talking to the instruments and other things, I put it down to being alert all day while Tess sleeps and reads books, some have it good.... Ouch just got a clip on the ear for that one..
Day 3
Destination King George River Western Australia via Bonaparte Bay.
Up early the wind is South East at 5 knots, Tess is still pensive about the crossing I reckon it should take about 36 to 50 hours to get across depending on the wind strength. With the light conditions I decide to put up the mainsail with the headsail, we happily get along at 4knots once the wind gets up a bit and thats what we sail at for the day, with the sun going down the wind drops out and we are at the mercy of the tide.
I drop the mainsail just in case the wind gets up during the night , the headsail finds the slightest bit of wind and we are doing a very healthy 1 knot, at this rate we will have 2 feet in the grave by the time we get to King George River..... I do not consider motor sailing as fuel on this part of our adventure will play an important part of where we stop, the vastness of the Kimberlys is formidable and the areas we want to stop at can mean motoring into rivers for many miles and that will use our fuel supply. You just can’t pull in to a servo in this part of Aussie, fuel is up to $2.50 a litre and you have to travel to remote missions to get it and that costs $100.00 return in most places, then you have to cart fuel cans with you and it makes for hard yakka.
Tess retires for the night and by 9.oopm the wind starts to pick up and we are doing a nice 3 to 4 knots, as we near the centre of the Bay the tide becomes a big factor and I have to steer 30 degrees toward the tide to keep on course, by sunrise the wind has picked up to 15 knots and we are cruising along, with all these Bays as you leave the mainland and end up miles from the shore, the wind waves have time to build up and it can make some of us become bucket heads...
Alas Tess comes out of the aft cabin looking less healthy than when she retired 9 hours ago, I ask the obvious question on how she is feeling and am greeted with the stare of death.... I dare not tell her that we have another 24 hours to go as the knife in her hand seems to be heading in my direction....not really, I feel sorry for her and try to get her over her feelings by sitting her out the back sucking in fresh air, but bugger me the bucket falls at her feet when a wave splashes over the side and that’s enough to turn Tess into a bucket head.
So how long do you let someone suffer before you feel enough is enough, the sufferer thinks that instantaneous relief is too slow.... then again the turning point for me is when Tess asks for the 25 litre bucket instead of the 10, I know she’s really crook now, I suppose this is when the gentle side of my nature comes out telling Tess and having to shout above the noise of the wind and sea “YOU”LL NEVER BE A F*%$#@^ SAILOR AT THIS RATE’....darling.
I wait until dehydration, uncontrollable shaking and delirium sets in, then dutifully fire up the engines and within a few hours we are in the approaches of King George River.
Day 4
A day of rest.
We cannot get over the beauty of this place, the walls of the river are 100 metres high, rugged with many colours and overhangs of rock looking as if they are about to fall. We motor to the upper waterfalls where I have heard you can put the bow of your boat under one in particular, of course I will have to have a go at that, and indeed you can, the depth of water at the base of the falls is 60 metres (180feet) so there’s no worries about running aground. Tess is out on the bow and she has to hang on as the waterfall produces its own wind and she could get blown around and god forbid go overboard as there are crocs here as well.
Got a video of this plus photos as you will see on the blog, the video is attached to the email..
We stayed near the waterfalls for the night and became a home for millions of bugs, we ended up shutting all the windows, hatches and door to keep them out, but having a cabin full of bugs to contend with we lit the good old mozzie coil and ended up with dead bugs everywhere.
There was something weird about where we were anchored both Tess and I had a rough night with nightmares and spooky stuff, maybe some abo shit happened here.... who knows....
Day 5
We went for a bit more of an explore and then went to a point outside the river ready for our next destination the next day, we launched the dingy for a sojourn to the beach at the point to see what was there, the water was clear so I went for a quick dip while Tess looked out for crocs, the beach gave up a few good shells and not much else, we went back to Nightmoves to relax and as the day went on the wind picked up, so I rang my son Harding on the satphone for a weather report.
Things were not good, a strong wind warning was issued for 25 to 30 knots for a few days, so we opted out of the point anchorage as it was a rocky bottom only good for reasonable weather and went back inside the river to anchor in sandy mud great holding in poor weather. Until the weather settles we are staying here......
Decided to try a bit of crabbing so took a cruise in the dingy with our 1 crab pot, found a nice place to put it and will retrieve it tomorrow.
Day 6
We or should I say I went to check the crab pot, Tess reckoned it was too cold to venture out so off I went . Could not believe it when I pulled in the pot it was full of crabs at least 50 of the crustaceans.... only thing was they were hermit crabs.... After a while Tess heated up and became lukewarm (sounds like what a croc does except I’ll take on a croc before my beloved), we went for a sojourn along the beach to find an elusive shell Tess had spotted from the boat with the binoculars, turns out it was a piece of plastic... we are getting a bit frustrated with the weather and decide to go to Glycosmis Bay tomorrow.
Day 7
Glycosmis Bay here we come, a charter boat was outside the King George River so we called it up and they gave us the latest weather update which was all good. Getting into the Bay is not as easy as I thought the anchorage we want to get to has a barred entrance and we are on the wrong side of the tide which is dropping fast.
The water is dirty and the only way to find the way is to stay between the waves breaking in shallow water and where they’re not breaking, this makes for a few anxious moments, but eventually we make it, with the course we took logged on the plotter it will be easy to get out ...
Wonderful waterfalls come into view and I can see one which I can put Nightmoves under, Tess is armed with the video and we get some great footage. Later in the day we went searching for a cave shown on one of the guides but can’t find it, I break out the fishing gear and start trolling behind the dingy.
As we troll Tess sees a croc slide and we take a look. it is a fresh one but not a huge croc by the width of the slide, we hook up a fish and it’s a small Trevaley back it goes to grow a bit more. Tess gets the heeby jeebys about crocs and wants to go back to Nightmoves so we troll back and pick up another fish but it’s small as well, we get back and relax for the rest of the afternoon.
Day 8
Today is short run to Jim’s Bay, getting out of Glycosmis Bay is easy as all is logged on the plotter, we get to Jim’s Bay early and depth sound the bay apart from where the recommended anchorage is shown. Again the people who come up with these anchorages wear skirts or have shares in the anchor chain manufacturers.... even at the lowest possible tide if your boat drew 9 feet of water you would still need a deep sea diver to get to the bottom.... crikey all you need is a foot of water under you at the lowest possible tide.... so enough whinging,.. I find a spot some half a nautical mile closer to the beach than the skirts recommend and toss the obligatory amount of chain needed to hold fast.
The flies are shocking here, little bush bastards, trying to suck your snot and ear wax.. you dare not pass wind or the blighters will bring out their knives and forks....we decide to go for a sojourn and toddle off in the dingy, Tess points out a beach to visit so we arrive and the beach is littered with Camel footprints and dung. Upon a walk of discovery we can’t find any Camels but I spot a hole dug into the side of a sand dune with some very interesting snake like prints outside, normally one would not be worried about this, but the size of the slithering prints makes me think we have discovered the lost world and whatever made these marks must be 50 foot long....Time to leave...
Before we make our escape you can’t help but notice that the Camels must have a sense of humour, when dropping their dung blobs they land perfectly on top of the poor old sand crab’s house. The crabs then have to burrow through the dung to escape to the surface, so now the crabs have to go through shit to get home... I try trolling in the bay but there is no fish, back to Nightmoves for a relaxing arvo, tomorrow we pass the most northerly point of Western Australia..yeehaa.
Day 9
Out of Jims bay and off to Cape Talbot via Cape Londonderry the most Northerly point of WA. You have to go 5 miles out to sea to pass Cape Londonderry as the water shoals that far out, the weather is kind to us and we have a lovely sail.
The Coastwatch plane zooms in on us and we check in with our movements, Tess answers the call from them and handled everything to perfection, crikey she even sounded as though she knew what she was doing..... Another smack in the chops for me but it was worth the laugh...
Trolled the whole way and picked up 2 fish but they were undersize so back they went, When we reached Cape Talbot it was only 2pm. So we trundled on to the Drysdale River another 9 miles down the track and anchored at 4.50pm, It is still hot as a chillie bum here, we can’t wait for the winter to come.
We will adventure up the Drysdale tomorrow and see what we can find, one thing here at the anchorage is the sand hills, they are huge and untouched and the stuff on the beach looks gatherable to me.... When my boy arrives in 3 weeks time we can have a look.
I have a well deserved few beers and tonight I may be able to sleep, alas the wind comes up and where I’m anchored we cop a flogging, it’s dark and I don’t want to chance finding somewhere out of the wind at his time of night, we stay and get pummelled.
Day 10
At daybreak the wind settles and we go forth following the cruising guide from The Fremantle Yacht Club. Thank fuck I have insurance.... we get 6 miles up the river and I’m wary of the track given by the guide, the depths are erratic and I slow to 3knots, the depth sounder shows a rocky bottom and soon enough the starboard hull screams as we collide with a rock side on, luckily I had time to pull the motor into neutral, the starboard rudder cops the full force of the impact and we stop dead.
As we drift away from the impact point we are heading into more rocks and damage, we soon get wedged in between rocks and as I assess the situation, I ask Tess to check the bilges for any water ingress and thankfully the is none, I was sure the hulls would have been holed with the impact, not knowing or being able to see what were caught on, I have to take the chance and put the motors in gear, thankfully the props turn without hitting anything and ever so slowly the rocks set us free.

We get back to ground we had already covered and I find the steering is damaged, the wheel is extremely hard to turn and now the main concern is blowing a hose in the hydraulic steering and not having any steering at all miles from anywhere. I remember that I can turn off the starboard rudder from the port rudder. We drop anchor in safe water and hope that the port rudder is still intact, the starboard rudder is turned off and bloody ripper the steering frees up and we have steerage from the port rudder only but that is awesome.
The starboard rudder is set straight in line with the hull so it will not affect the course of the boat, we will have to find a sandbank to put the boat on near high tide so when the tide goes out we can then see the full extent of the damage. A fellow Don McCloud who lives up the river pulled up to chat with us, as we told him of what had happened he was not surprised as 7 other boats had come to grief in the same place. The guide is totally wrong and Don had told the writers of the guide on several occasions over the past 2 years to rectify the problem before someone gets badly injured or sunk.” If you sink up here you can get eaten”.
I will most certainly be speaking to the authors of the guide and find out why they have not heeded Dons calls, you do expect some accuracy when your forking out 80 bucks for a cruising guide, we will continue with our journey until we get to Broome in October where the boat can be repaired, the worst thing is with the starboard rudder out of action we don’t have auto pilot so I will have to hand steer... Been years since I’ve done that ... 1989 to be exact....
Day 11
Today the tides have got higher in the morning so at 6.00am the dreaded alarm goes off and it’s time to go to a sandbank I checked out yesterday. So anchored up and waited for the low tide to come, where we are there is only 1 tide per day and you have to be very carefull when you dry out as it’s 12 hours before you can get off..
It took 3 hours (10am) to finally be just touching the sand , when there was about 1 foot of water(2.00pm) to run out it was time to check out the damage on the rudder. I was expecting worse than what I seen and I suppose was glad things were less. Camera in hand taking shots of the good rudder and the damaged rudder I then noticed the propeller was slightly damaged but not enough to effect performance.
I rang Don McCloud old mate at the camp to see if he had a crow bar as the rudder may be able to be bent into its normal position, Don had one and brought it down along with his 3 grand children, we tried to bend the rudder back but to no avail. Oh well that’s life so we chatted for an hour then when Don went to leave his dingy was aground and as it weighed 750 kgs it was not going to move, now the next tide for him to get off was 8 hours away, we sent his eldest grandchild away in our blue dingy to get Don’s spare dingy from his camp 5 miles up the river.
Don needed his spare dingy to get his mob back to camp as my little dingy would not carry all of them, doing 2 trips was out of the question as it would have taken forever, so while we waited for the spare dingy to arrive we sat down for a billy and a yarn. Don was full of information about the local area, I asked him about the crocs and to my surprise he told us that a couple of years ago poachers had gone through the river and taken all but about 20 crocs out of about a 130....
Don has lived on the river for 10 years and is quite concerned about how fragile the eco system is, you don’t think that in this rugged remote area that would be possible but when people start charter boat fishing trips they soon deplete the fish stocks as they hit the same reefs day after day. The reefs up here are few and far between the area is mostly sandy and in the rivers there is not much marine mud for fish breeding, even the mud crabs are few as they have a season when they appear which is September to December. The Kimberly’s being a fishing haven is Bullshit The pelagic species are in abundance but that is the same in most unpopulated areas, the resident fish are the one’s under pressure and the place will become an ocean desert in a few years if left unchecked.
Back to the crocs which got poached, a skin(10 foot croc)if taken off correctly fetches around $12,000.00 dollars on the black market. A crocs skull and jaw bones get $3,000.00 dollars, so if the poachers got over a hundred crocs 10 foot long in 2 days that’s 1.5 million dollars, I think I want to be a poacher..... It is very lucrative but if you get caught you would have steel bars in front of your face for a long time.
Near Dons camp there are Abo paintings in caves nearby, we will be going back there in late July so will see them then.
Day 12
Up early we are floating and off we go, Honeymoon Bay is our destination and I get my first taste of hand steering with which I am very unaccustomed, you just can’t take your eyes off the compass and when you do your all over the place like a drunken horse. Thank King Neptune the distance is minimal and my suffering only lasts a few hours.
When we arrive the place is a hive of activity with fishermen launching boats, Quad bikes roaring along bush tracks and beaches, people swimming, I took my bike over to a boat ramp to ride around to see what this place had to offer, ended up yarning to a local who later I nicknamed “Sarge” he’s ex army and his boats are painted with camouflage paint, he informed me that an Abo named Les lived just up the road and he is a storyteller and it would well be worth spending a few hours listening to his life experiences.
Old Les it turns out had gone walkabout to some place and would not be back for a few days.... I reckon the old coon has gone to a town with grog to get on the piss as this is a dry area. Anyway will catch up with him when we come back this way later on. The camp ground here is very basic as are the facilities, we need to get water but not from here, the water is poor quality and we have been told that there is good water at a place called McGowans around the next bay so we will try there tomorrow.
We ventured into the water for a swim just off the shore in waste deep water and it was crackerjack.
A call came over the radio from Coastwatch that 25 people were seeking asylum on a boat out past Bouganville Point, they had contacted a boat nearby and asked if they could stand by the boat until a Navy boat would arrive in a few hours, the captain of the boat was hesitant to do so then Coastwatch reminded him that as a law of the sea he should give assistance to a vessel asking for help, this the captain agreed to and he stood off the boat until the Navy arrived.
Day 13
Woke up to a magnificent sunrise the water was a glass out as far as the horizon, we watched some antics at the boatramp and it was defiantly the lampoons fishing adventure.... this mob launched 2 dingys and for half an hour they pulled the crap out of their outboards before getting them to start, when they started there was more smoke than world war 2 engulfing the boatramp.... one of the boats putted out towards us and the head of this lampoon boat said,’ gudday mate, we’ve ad a rough trip up e’re on the roads... broke a fuel line in the outboard an’ busted off me gear lever off the outboard as well...” he showed me the separated gear lever as he said “She works alright now just gotta make sure the gear lever don’t go overboard...” Crikey this bloke is a gem, taking his family out in the Kimberlys with a gear lever in hand which should be connected to the outboard... I will await the mayday call later... the second dingy was now underway and as they chuffed off into the distance the last words we heard from them was “ did anybody bring some bait”....... some mothers do have em...
Tried to sail around to McGowan’s but when the boat speed did not even make 1 knot I gave up, we happily motored along and found the place without any trouble. Tess spotted a tap on the beach with a hose attached, you ripper, Tess had a yarn to a sheila on a motor cat moored just off the beach and asked what was here she was very helpfull, eventually I raised McGowan’s on the radio and asked to get some water, they told me to contact Colin who was on the beach..... somewhere.... I sent Tess over to the beach to find Colin and she found him sweeping the dirt around a tree.... you meet all kinds around here...
After a quick g’day Tess asked the question about the water and Colin said how much do you normally pay for water, that was enough to get Tess into top gear, we never pay for water and its the necessity of life, Mate.. he hinted at 10 bucks then dropped that and succumbed to Tess’s charm. So I put Nightmoves up on the shore and the hose reached the fill point easily, it took an hour to fill and now we are set for another 2 weeks without having to use our backup tank.
Day14
After a pleasant sleep we were off to Truscott where my boy will meet us in a couple of weeks for a holiday up here, no wind again so we motored over and found the place. It was an absolute shithole to say the least, a sign on the barge ramp prattles on about being a WW2 heritage site.... it seems that somewhere along the line it was forgotten to tell the users of this facility, that you take your empty fuel drums with you...... There would have to be over a thousand drums tossed into the wilderness to happily rust away, the tyres left behind are a bit more orderly they’ve been tossed on the beach !!!!!
By the way you can get fined for trespassing what a joke. We left there and went to Anjo Bay which is still on the mainland and anchored for the night.
Day 15
Today we are going to another area Vinsittart Bay 20 miles west of Anjo Bay which has all sorts of islands and stopoffs, we decide to go to Jar Island which is at the bottom of the bay. We have read that there are Aboriginal cave paintings on the island so we want to try and find them, no wind again so we have to motor, when we get to Jar Island it seems very hostile as the rock formations are very broken and strewn about , navigating here is a bit of a worry as the bottom is rock, I find a beach on the Northern side of the island and anchor up between rocks but have enough room to swing should the wind kick in.
We read up on the cave paintings and find that we are in the right spot, off to the beach to start searching and there is a fairly good leed at the back of the beach. We stumble around like 2 old cows on the piss, Tess reckons the trail is up some precipice that would take us to Tasmania, the boy scout comes out in me and the trail is found, like good trekkers we don’t have any water or fuck all to keep us hydrated in the heat, we moo on for a while and then Tess walks into the cavern of the paintings. We are wrapped and crack off the cameras at an alarming rate, we discuss what the Abos’life was like and head back towards the boat, then out of the corner of my eye another trail appears so we trample the bush to death on towards the next cavern. Tess beats me again and like a good moo gives me a holler that she’s arrived. These paintings are better than the first lot so we put on our acting suits and video the lot.
On the way back to the boat I take a short long cut and run second again, drat..... we decide to move around to the south side of the island for tonight as the rocks beside the boat have grown teeth and are looking hungry. We anchor up off another beach in 40ft of water.
Day 16
After a blissful nights snoring and bottom burping chatter is heard outside, Tess investigates and it’s a boatload of people heading to the shore, no doubt they know something we don’t, so we keep tabs on them while we get the dingy ready for a hot pursuit to the beach. When we pull up at the beach there’s more footprints than a good day at Bondi.....So at least we won’t have our cow skins on today, a blind man riding an emu could follow these ruts..
The mob in front of us are at the caves, so halfway up what seems like the side of Mount Everest, we pull up on a rock and wait till the mob descends down past us. We want the place to ourselves as we still have our acting suits on and we don’t wish to embarrass anyone especially ourselves....the place is fascinating the entire floor is a midden with thousands of hermit crab shells strewn about, the paintings are very clear and tell a story, the caves have internal tunnels that a normal person could crawl through, us 2 moos would get stuck so we can that idea.
Lucky we have 2 cameras with us I start to take video’s and Tess attacks the other camera only to find that the batteries are still in the charger on the boat.... after we have documented and bullshitted our way round the caves we descend and find a side track, I sent Tess to scout the trail while I rest on a nice rock, she discovers more caves with clearer paintings and the camera is flashing like a strobe light in a disco.
While all of this is going on I start to descend the mountain, I didn’t get far when Tess the trail blazer yells out to find her way back to the trail...she’s lost... only for a little while....alas she catches up with me when I’m at the bottom of the hill, back to the beach we go and the water is crystal clear so we go for a short swim.
Later in the day a couple of blokes come past us trolling and bugger me he hooks up just near us, when he lands the fish it’s a Spanish Mackeral, so once they leave, I rest for awhile before releasing the dingy to take me to the fishing ground, I sort off went towards the blokes boat who caught the fish and they cooeed me over for a chat, when I left them I had a nice fillet of Spanish Mackeral sitting next to me.... good blokes these one’s..
Tess cooked up battered fresh fish for dinner with chips made by me, another great day....

Day 17
We know there’s a strong wind warning coming for Thursday which is tomorrow; we decide to go over to the wreckage of a DC3 which crashed in WW2. This is about 8 miles from our last anchorage, If the wind kicks in early it won’t matter as the next destination Freshwater Bay is North West and the wind will be directly behind us. In these parts we are going to, the area is not surveyed for the last 2 miles, this is a pain as you have to keep a lookout for sneaky rocks but mostly they are close to shore, we manage to get within a 100 metres of the beach where this plane is before dropping anchor.
After a pleasant stroll over a sandhill and across a salt pan we find the wreckage, it is in great nick and the damage is relatively not too bad, the fuselage is in 1 piece and 1 wing is broken off, it looks as though the crew would have walked away with a few scratches, there are bullet holes through the plane maybe this is what brought it down. We will try to find out what did happen, me speculating would only come up with a tale that would be somewhat fictional, I mean I reckon (here we go)... it was a pleasant day when the chaps from “Black Dog Pigs Nuts Squadron” were on a routine flight from Darwin, when on the approach to Truscott Airfield, which is only 2 miles from the crash site, spotted some activity in the salt pan and went to investigate, bugger me, dropped on the salt pan was 40 pallets of grog, the crew got so excited they forgot who was driving the DC3, crashed the mother right next to the grog, as they didn’t put out a Mayday call they were stuck for 2 weeks with only grog to survive on...... Sounds feasible... NOT...
It was very uncomfortable where we were anchored so we took off for Freshwater Bay we arrived at 5 pm and were greeted by a 6 ft shark... nice one...
Day 18
Freshwater bay is a lovely spot and we have some neighbours , the tide is needed to get to the freshwater stream 200 metres from the boat, we venture over with some of our washing as we don’t know what we will find. We dingy through the mangroves and the bottom of the stream comes into view, what a pleasant surprise we find this wide open space with water gently cascading down with many pools that you can swim in, this is defiantly good shit, Tess takes off up to a pond and washes her hair then does some washing.
I’m havachatting with the neighbours and this is really a place to be enjoyed, I take over the washing duties which is hard to take as you have to sit in the cool water while turning our portable washing contraption, boy we have it tough.... we stay for a couple of hours swimming and socialising, tomorrow we will be back to do more washing and fill our water tanks to the brim, we went looking for some ‘Kimberly Oysters’ in the afternoon and found some, we had to leave the oystering until tomorrow as the sandflies tried to carry us away, we did try them and they are huge and delicious, look out sandflies tomorrow we bring the bushmans spray.....another day in paradise.
Day 19
Up reasonably early for the oyster hunt, Tess has reneged on the hunt and I am on my own, I go to a small beach close by and gather a few nice oysters, I take them back to the boat then decide to venture further afield which brings me to a rocky cove a mile from the boat. I’m in heaven, oysters everywhere and untouched, I only take a dozen or so as these oysters are huge.
I pickup a rock which has the biggest oyster I have ever seen and take it back to the boat, this oyster has to be videoed and photographed as no one would believe me that it is so big. Tess batters the oysters for an entrée and they are delicious.
Day 20
We decide to fill the boat with water and finish the washing, after a few trips back and forth the job is done. It was made easy getting the water, I took a hose over to the stream and set it in place so that I could fill the containers in the dingy at the bottom of the stream , once they were filled I just left the hose where it was until I returned in the dingy.
We were on Nightmoves when a Pan Pan call came through on the radio, these are high distress calls and I answered. A boat called Advanti 2 had run aground at middle rock some 10 miles away from where we were, I spoke to the bloke and he sounded confused to say the least, I asked him to put out a kedge anchor, which means you jump in your dingy lower your anchor into the dingy and take it towards the wind or tide whichever is greater, that will hold you fast and stop you going further aground.
This bloke had no fucking idea what I was talking about, I thought he had gone to put the kedge anchor out as the radio was silent for 20 minutes. This bloke calls me up again and I ask him how the kedge anchor went and he told me the anchor was too heavy..... and was I on my way to help him.... for fuck sake this bloke couldn‘t save a toy duck in a bathtub let alone his boat... so I told him it would take me over an hour to get there. Tess and I packed up Nightmoves and headed off at three quarter speed into a 15 knot wind, we were copping a fair flogging but Nightmoves was up to the job.
We were about 30 minutes from getting to this bloke when he gets me on the radio and tells me he’s got off the reef..... I was pissed off but still glad that he was all right, he offered me compensation for wasting my time but helping other boaties comes without question or expectation of compensation, Out of the blue this bloke asked me would it be ok to pull up to a beach and see if and how much damage had been done to his boat..... I asked him if he intended to jump into the water or not and he said yes.... Fairdinkum this place is full of crocs and this bloke wants to jump overboard, i said “Mate if your boats not leaking and everything is functioning DON”T” again some mothers do have em.
Day 21
We’re off to Parry Harbour for a bit of a look see, when we get around there we decide to keep going to Osbourne Island, the tide is with us and we can come back to the harbour later in the week. Again we are in uncharted waters around the Osbourne Islands, there are Pearl Farms to contend with as well, we find a nice anchorage in Cyclone Cove aptly named as the Pearl Farmers have moorings in here for use during cyclones to protect their work boats.
We get a visit from one of the Pearl Farmers bosses, he is a very good bloke, after a while he offers to take me to a landing place where we can walk from to find some extensive caves. All yachties get checked out especially as it’s harvest time for the pearls, he tells us that the cost of the whole operation is covered by the sale of the used shells ($60) the clam meat ($125.00 kilo) the sale of the pearls is profit. At an average 6 Grand per pearl that’s big bucks.
We go in search of the caves and take some trail marking strips of material with us, this makes it easier for everyone to find the way and for us to get back. We find the caves and they are massive, we have torches to explore the darker tunnels which run for 50 metres or so. This area which is called the “Block of Flats” was inhabited and by the amount of middens, they had a good life here. The protection of the caves plus the close proximity of water and abundant sea food would have made life just that much easier for the indigenous.
Totally satisfied with our discovery we went back to the boat for a rest.
Day 22
Today we are going to find the 3 Arches which we’ve been given the general direction of, there is supposed to be a fresh water stream near the Arches as well so we look for that first. No luck and the country has that “you will die here feel “so we bolt out of there, we soon find the Arches as they can be seen from the dingy as we approach the beach, once on shore this place is ancient, you can feel the ruggedness of the land through your body, I spot a shell on the beach and it’s a bailing shell medium size, Tess finds another 2 and they are all in perfect condition.
The arches themselves are impossible only mother earth can make these stand, the length of one of the arches is 40 metres resting on a pedestal half a metre in diameter. You have to be here to take in the enormity of the arches. Tess wanders out in the bush and finds a amphitheatre, she defiantly doesn’t sound like Joan Sutherland but she has a go..... There’s a bank of shells some 4 metres deep covering 400 square metres, countless shells dating back millions of years, it makes you wonder how long ago the first shell landed here.
Day 23
We make tracks for the Mitchell River and were hoping for a good breeze but that drops out, we end up motoring to the entrance of the river where we drop anchor. You have to enter this river on a fairly high tide, it dries out just inside the entrance for a mile and a half at low tide. We end up with a visitor coming to the boat, a little croc... this croc hangs around for quite awhile maybe hoping for a free feed.
Day 24
Up early to take the tide into the river, we end up in Surveyors Creek which is a narrow but reasonably deep. On the way we meet up with another croc just cruising along oblivious to us, I pass the croc which is 10 feet from the boat, we anchor up and this croc just cruises around. This place is very tranquil hardly a ripple on the water and the birds are singing their tunes, I took the dingy up to the waterfall which was not all that impressive, the tide was low and even though the water was running good, the quality was nowhere near Freshwater Bay falls.
After I got back from the falls (Tess is pensive about going in the dingy with crocs around) we relaxed for the afternoon and just watched all the goings on with the wildlife, just after dusk Tess let the water out of the sink which splashed into the water, this was like a go sign for the local crocs, crikey this one croc slid down the bank some 50 metres away and made way to the boat in quick time...(Tess’s comment THAT’S WHY I DON’T GO IN THE DINGY WHEN I CAN SEE THE CROCS......)
We tipped some more water over the back of the boat and this croc moved closer to see if a free feed was on offer, a few fish made a scurry near the shore and the croc lost interest in us and went searching for them. Just goes to show what attracts these fellows. We sleep outside on the deck and to our surprise no mozzies.
Day 25
We left Surveyors Creek and anchored just outside the creek entry in the Mitchell River, this was a necessity as the low tide today would see us on the bottom if we stayed in the creek. A large boat was down the river, at high tide the tender (26ft. 100k.) from that boat made its way up to us, they asked if we had seen any helicopters flying around as they were to pick up passengers from the top of Surveyors Creek. We told them that we hadn’t and the creek entry was just behind them, they went up the creek and a few minutes later a chopper flew over.
The mob in the tender then came back to us and we told them the chopper flew over then they took off again , the chopper came looking for them, finally they seen each other and the passengers were picked up. On the way out of the river the skipper of the tender made a blunder and ran into submerged rocks, I thought they had stuffed both drive shafts but lucky for them they got away with a bruised ego and minimal damage.
We had to have a rest after that..... later on I decided to have a fish and tried out a fancy lure that we bought in Darwin, that was short lived the lure found a new home on a rock and it was bye bye 15 bucks.... so back to the old faithfull spoon lure, after a few outstanding casts I watched as the spoon disappeared over the mangroves....seems as though the thing was not connected to the line properly, I downed tools cursed then decided to use a hand line instead.
Before I rigged up with the hand line Tess spotted a croc on a sandbank 200 metres away, this was time to bring out the Irwin in me, no way Tess was coming, I armed myself to the teeth with my video cameras and half a fishing knife.... let the adventure begin. I reckon this croc was around the 3 metres, enough to chew a limb or two off. I went up river from this bloke as his escape path off the sand bank was downstream and you don’t want to be in his path, once these blokes head down thier escape path if your in the way you get snotted.
Coming downstream the croc got nervous and started to bolt I have all this on video and I got close very close, it was a buzz and the adrenalin was flowing like a flooded river...after that it was time to try the fishing thing again. This time with the trusty hand line I soon got results, although not the ones I really wanted, whatever it was in the water was smashing the gear and even eating the sinkers... so I tried a new rig which was unorthodox to say the least but it worked, dinner tonight will be Yellow Spotted Rock Cod which is a native Kimberly fish which is a 4 out of 5 star table fish as well.
It had been a big day and we both crashed out ....
Day 26
Time to leave and head back towards Truscott, we will have to be there in 5 days to pick up Harding for a 2 week holiday. We had a rough day of it the wind was totally erratic, had to drop the sails and motor into short steep wind waves yuk. Anchored in Parry Harbour for the night some 50 miles from the Mitchell River.
Day 27
Another crappy day for sailing so we motor to Freshwater Bay, Met up with Tryphena and Nakara and had afternoon talkies and cups of tea.
Day 28
Tryphena and Nakara left for other destinations and we are on our lonesome , it’s time to fill the water tank and get the washing done, the creek is still running well so we start the shuffle between the creek and the boat. After taking on a few loads of water we have to go and do the washing before the tide drops too low to get to the creek, we spend 5 hours on domestic duties and that’s enough for the day. 2 more boats pull in and anchor for the night, one is called Reality and Dog on Cat.
Day 28
We spend the day relaxing and discovering a bit more of the creek further upstream, we found a very nice water hole which we swim in and give the hair a shampoo and condition. We ran into the crew of Reality and exchanged the usual banter then Tess drops a bombshell and asks if they are off the “SMALL” yacht that came in last night.... Boaties unwritten law states that you never call another boaties boat “SMALL’, you may as well tell them that their kangaroo couldn’t root a possum....
The conversation slowly fell into the dunny so we ventured back to the boat where I told Tess about the unwritten law, we met the crew off Dog on Cat, Rod and Barb, they have been cruising the Kimberly’s for 10 years. We told them we were off to the Drysdale River to see Don Macloud, they have known Don for many years and Ron had discovered a very rare painting in the Drysdale River.
We made plans to leave tomorrow for Truscott to pick up my son Harding.
Day 29
Were off and again there is no wind so it was motors on all the way, we get to Truscott and it’s rough with the wind blowing on shore, we anchor up and finally the weather settles and we have a good night.
Day 30
The boy arrives and the weather is perfect, my mate Peter from Darwin had organised a 200 litre drum of diesel to be left at Truscott for me, so we decanter the fuel into the boat and we’re off. Harding can’t believe the remoteness and the vast stretched out coastline and no people, we make our way over to Honeymoon Bay to have a swim and sort out a lift into Kalumbaru to the mission for tucker as we are running low, this will also give Harding a chance to see how the Abos live.
We went to shore and ran into a fellow in a tin shack his name was Bob and after a short conversation we had our lift organised in 2 days time. We went over to the mouth of the Drysdale River to wait for the tide tomorrow then we will go up to Don Macloud’s for a few days.
Day 31
While we wait for the tide we go to shore where there are sand dunes, the dunes are untouched and there is not 1 footprint anywhere, Harding takes off all over the dunes like a mad thing, a few nice shells are found, time to take off up the river and all goes well, there is plenty of water and we arrive early afternoon, this river is magnificent there are fish galore and crocs as well, we take a mooring that Don has put down and head over to his camp for a cup of tea and a yarn.
Day 32
You cannot describe this place as there is too much to see and do, we swim in the rapids at the end of the salt water, fish just using hooks with no bait and get results, Don takes us on a journey to the rare painting, Bowerbird Nest and fishing.
Harding and I go fishing later in the day and on the way back a croc has appeared out the back of Nightmoves, Tess cooees us and we get very close to this croc, once it goes under the water we leave quickly as this is the crocs domain.

written by

Nightmoves on August 1, 2010 from Darwin, Australia

from the travel blog: Robbie and Tess around Australia

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Hey Rob & Tess, It sounds like you guys are having "way"too much fun.Bummer about the damage to your ship on the rocks, but you came through ok.The beauty of of alloy is that it is easy to repair.We are in Mackay for awhile , the perkins is giving us grief, I will keep working on it until it's right. A new 'nanny' is $20,000 ex Sydney......not going to happen!(I hope).Let us know when you are in phone range,it would be great to catch up. Take care :The Aardvarks

written by Mr Aardvark on August 2, 2010

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