Our Final Leg

Cyclone Hadi had everyone in the marina busy, tying down anything that could come loose, securing boats even securer, filling up empty berths with boats that were usually moored out in the bay etc etc.

When we were all done and ready for the excitement, Cyclone Hadi changed its course, went back out to sea and fizzled out.

So, we untied everything, and brought out the crystal again, did our last big shopping for the trip and set sail, looking for a few remnant gusts of wind from the receding cyclone.

Two days later, we anchored at Magnetic Island (just offshore from Townsville).

This was our first visit to Maggi.  We did lots of walking.  I was keen to test my new phone app which acted as a pedometer.  Stuart (my son) had put me onto it.  Not only did it count your steps (10,000 a day is supposed to be the optimum), but you could also keep an eye on how many steps your friends (competition) was taking.  

Horseshoe Bay

Magnetic Island has several small townships to cater for laid back locals as well as those seeking a few days away from the 'Big Smoke'.

The beach was enjoyed by both horses and riders at Horseshoe Bay (appropriately named).







So far, I hold my pedometer record for the walking we did at Maggi.  We walked the dunes behind the bay, looking for whatever wildlife may have been lurking there.  

 







Do wildflowers count as wildlife?  I was careful not to get too close to the Wild Passionflower above as it is rumoured that they go for the throat. 
You can see the little yellow fellow putting up a valiant battle with the bee.  I left them to fight it out.

On we went, my pedometer ticking over.  We found Rainbow Bee-eaters, Dollarbirds and Friarbirds.  

Click, click, click went our cameras.

We found lots and lots of butterflies.  Usually, where there's a lot of butterflies, they all seem to be a predominant species, but here there were many.  I was pretty happy to catch this blue spotted one which I have seen around Cairns but have been unable to catch its erratic behaviour.  This one obligingly landed a few times which is quite uncharacteristic of them.

On we went till we had to double back so we could get around the back of this lagoon.

I was after a good score on the pedometer!

Maniacal laughter rang over the bushland as Blue-wing Kookaburras gave it all they had.




I felt as though I was being watched.  

At the end of the beach was a nudist.  He was being watched :)








We left Magnetic Island on an exceptionally calm day and had to motor all the way to Hinchinbrook Island.  This wasn't such a bad thing as we wanted to stop at Zoe Bay on the exposed eastern side of the island.  There were very few days of the year where you could get a calm anchorage here.  



 Ian and I let Scottie (the autopilot) earn his keep while we had fun trying to capture photos of the 
Garfish which would skip their way over the water to flee the oncoming yacht.











It must have been dolphin's day out as we passed several pods that day.  The calm conditions were ideal for them to hunt Garfish.

One of the attractions of Zoe Bay besides the long rainforest-clad bay itself, is a walking track which leads to a waterfall and swimming hole.  

This walk is part of the Great Walk around Hinchinbrook which attracts people from all around the world and takes about 4 days to complete.

We were looking forward a swim in fresh water as water rations are very tight on Winkali.





Ian takes the first dip in the clear waters while I take photos and make sure that the resident Jungle Perch are safe to swim with.

The backdrop of the mountains at Zoe Bay are reminiscent of New Zealand's South Island.

We were anchored on the other side of these mountains on our southward leg when we stayed in one of the mangrove estuaries and caught our unfortunate Mud Crab.




A full moon rises over Winkali as we enjoy a final walk on Zoe Bay at dusk. It was a magical night with a clear starry sky reflected in the calm mirror-like sea.

The following day, the winds picked up and sped us on our way home with stops at Normanby Is and Fitzroy Is.

And so ends this adventure on Winkali.

Thanks for sharing our adventures with us 
Ian and Petra xx

The Highs and Lows of Sailing

View from Whitsunday Peak with Hook Island in the far background

The Highs

From Shaw Is we went to Whitsunday Island where there was good shelter from the swell and partial shelter from the wind.

The wind tends to play weird games in the Whitsundays as it funnels around and over the islands.  One minute it would be dead still, the next you could get a gust of 25kn which would last about 10 seconds, then it would be still again.

We anchored at Sawmill Bay, so named because they used to harvest Hoop Pines from this area in the late 1800s.  It was abandoned when they decided there weren't many Hoop Pines left here and there were more at Townsville.

There is still the remnants of a dam built on the creek  which runs into the bay.

They Pines seem to have recovered and are commonly seen on most of the islands on the Great Barrier Reef.

Whitsunday Island has a few walking tracks, one of them starting at Sawmill Bay and going to Whitsunday Peak, at a height of 407m. 

An excellent view of the surrounding islands was the reward for taking the trek. 

The view of the other side showing Hamilton Island in the background

I was a bit dubious about my fitness as we don't do a lot of foot mileage on the boat, however, the well maintained track wound back and forth through tropical rainforest in a very civilised manner and we got to the top quite easily.

I nearly didn't attempt the walk, as the sign at the bottom said one had to be very fit for the walk and it involved  climbing over boulders through gullies to get there.  The truth was, there was a couple of small boulders at one creek crossing. 

 

As we climbed higher, these millipedes appeared on and around the path.  Ian was brave enough to pick some up.  This gave me the advantage of having a group of them together as well as them being nicely curled up.  If you look closely, you can see that they appear to have wet patches on them.  After Ian had arranged them so nicely, he found he had an orange liquid on his hands which had a strong smell of iodine.  It must be a defence reaction of the millipedes.  We thought of collecting some millipedes and adding them to our First Aid Kit.

Another shorter walk took us to nearby Dugong Bay which claims to have the occasional dugong, although, we didn't see any and we are expert dugong spotters by now.

There are clearings here for campers with picnic tables, shelters and toilets.  Access is only by boat.  We continued to be impressed with how tidy and well maintained the area was.

One thing the rangers missed though was a new crop of stinging trees emerging on the side of the walking track.  A few meters in the forest were the parents trees, looking healthy and ready to sting.  These are related to stinging nettles, only they're a thousand times worse.  Covered with fine silica hairs, they attach themselves to the skin of unwary passers by and break off.  A neurotoxin is transferred into the victim via the hollow silica hairs which causes *excruciating pain which can last for weeks or even months. There is no true and tested pain relief and the best one can do is to place sticking plaster or wax strip over the affected area and try to remove as many as possible without breaking them off at skin level.

*Ian disagrees with the word excruciating and thinks I should modify it to 'excruciating if you're  a girl'.  To him it's just a mild pain.  I feel there may be a lot of girls out there.

The Lows

We've been keeping a close watch on a low pressure system that has been almost stationary in the Coral Sea for several weeks now. 

At this time of the year, there is always the chance it could form into a cyclone. 

We had been waiting in the Whitsunday area for over a week now to see what was going to happen with this particular low. 

As it started to slowly move our way, we made contingency plans.  Abell Point Marina at Airlie Beach was only two hours sail away, so on Thu 6 March, with strong wind warnings and an approaching low, we made our way there.  Lucky for us, they had a special on at the moment, which meant we could stay for 10 days for the price of 5. 

A good place to sit out the predicted 40kn winds over the weekend. 
A good place to sit out whatever the low brings.
Airlie Beach residents have started preparing for what might be a cyclone.

Find out what happens over the next few days in the next exciting episode of 'Winkali'.

Heading north

Pearl Bay

It's time to slowly head north to Cairns again.  We had spent a week at Great Keppel which included a day at Yeppoon to get provisions for the next few weeks.

Good winds were forecasted to get us there, however, they turned out to be just a little bit too good.  

Our first stop was at Pearl Bay, which is just a little north of Port Clinton where we stayed a few blogs back.  Pearl Bay is also a part of the large Shoalwater Bay military exercise area.


We marvelled at our luck of having huge expanses of tropical paradise to ourselves.  

It's not as bad as it looks, it's worse!

We stayed here for three nights waiting for the 'good winds' to abate.  The bay was quite sheltered from the wind, but the swell managed to sneak in which made our accommodation extremely rock and rolly.

Nights were spent being flung from one side of the bunk to the other.  I was grateful that I had melamine crockery as I lay there listening to it being smashed about in the cupboard.



Fresh water running from the backdrop of hills behind the beach created artwork in the sand.  

The remains of a Painted Crayfish lay in the sand like a half finished piece of artwork.






We somehow managed to safely get to shore in our dinghy, where we strolled along the beach collecting sea shells. 

When we had too many to carry we would put them in a neat little pile on the sand to collect on the way back. By the time we got back to them, we would decide that we didn't want to collect shells after all.  

We did this quite a few times on our trip, leaving little middens of sea shell collections on deserted beaches.

After two days and three nights, we decided it was safe enough to make a dash up to Percy Island where we collected coconuts and got new reading material from the book swap shed. 

From there we went to Scawfell Island which seemed to have quite a protected anchorage.  We were getting a bit tired from lack of sleep in the rolly conditions here.


Although Scawfell had a protected anchorage, the large swells generated by the strong south-easterlies overcame all barriers and insisted we become desensitised to being thrown about.  Boy, are we going to have our work cut out for us getting our land  legs back after this.

Once again, we had this island to ourselves and we didn't even have to risk live bombs and lasers this time.  

A  surprise was in store for us when we went ashore as we found a picnic table and shelter with a rain water storage tank - FULL!  We quickly went back to the boat and got our shampoo and returned for a much needed shower.

That afternoon, we decided to go snorkelling, even though it meant getting salty after our lovely fresh water shower.

The tide was low and the reef could be seen just below the surface.  Ian took his spear gun and I took my camera so we could both shoot some fish.

Wow!  We had been a bit disappointed with the reef in this area, and now we found some of the most amazing reef ever.  

From a snorkeller's perspective, this was heaven.  A myriad of coloured corals bloomed under the surface. decorated by living jewels of fish.  Then suddenly the reef dropped into sudden depths of blue, with millions of fish securing the perimeter.  There were deeps chasms and grottos interspersed throughout the reef with shafts of light dissecting the deeper blue depths of shadows.

No coral bleaching was apparent in this reef.  

I felt like a kid let loose in a lolly shop.

Giant clams were in abundance.  It is amazing at the different colours theses come in.

 The reef ended abruptly and fell into the depths of blue.

We found these fish filter feeding at the surface of the water.  These may have been the same as the fish we saw on our previous trip to the Top End at 7 Spirit Bay.  I took about 200 photos which I managed to edit down to 4 photos.  I'll only make you look at two of them :)

I had to make a movie of my underwater exploits.  If you want to watch it, it uses  *62mb and goes for 1:41secs  - I've upgraded the resolution on the movie from my original blog.

If you want to know how the Great White Hunter went with his shooting, yes, he was successful.  He managed to spear a large parrot fish which looked much too beautiful to eat (that's why I won't show you the photo).   Grant's Fish Guide said they were good eating, we were dubious till we tasted. Yum!  However, we reserved the thumbs up till the next day after we found that we didn't get sick.

We are now at Shaw Island, Burning Point where there isn't any swell, only strong wind, and there is internet connection.  

After consulting the weather charts on the B.O.M site, we are a bit worried about a low sitting to the north east of Cape York, so we'll wait around in safe areas a while before venturing north again.  

Back to Fraser Island

Walking along the track near Gary's Anchorage

After eight days of living with all the mod cons of showers, washing machines and shops at Tin Can Bay, we were more than ready to "rough it" once again at Fraser Island.  

Cyclones Dylan and Edna had finished their destruction a bit further up the coast, the wind had died down and it was safe for us to leave.

Even though the weather was quite cool and drizzly, it was a pleasant change for us to put on our raincoats to go for a walk.  

We found this little fresh water creek not far from where we anchored.  

The water was stained the colour of weak tea from the tannins of the trees but it was clean enough for us to have a dip in.  Luxury when you are on strict water rations.



While I was standing in the water, conducting my ablutions, I kept on feeling something prickly on my foot.  Thinking it was just the weed and sticks flowing down the creek, I didn't take much notice.  Later, I noticed there were yabbies in the creek, so I took my trusty little underwater camera and snuck up on one to take a little movie. All went well till I felt more prickles on my foot.  I looked down and noticed that my feet had attracted the attention of several yabbies, and far from being afraid of me, they were investigating to see if I was edible.  I got out of there in a hurry and asked Ian if he would do the movie for me.

Bravely, he went in and recorded them for me.  I gave him instructions from the safety of the bridge.  

The movie goes for 1:21 and uses 16.4mb

The area between Fraser Island and the mainland is well named, The Great Sandy Straits.  The many sand banks and low water levels at low tide, have caused many boat delays and worse, as they wait for high tide to rescue them from a terrestrial confinement.

This area is also important to many migratory birds which come to fatten up  on our delicious worms, shrimps and other delicacies which abound in their muddy habitat.                       
      

One of these summer visitors is the Eastern Curlew, easily identified by its ginormous long downward curved beak.  These birds migrate from Siberia, after a short breeding season, often leaving their chicks behind before they can fly properly.  The chicks follow on this migration from as young as 6 to 8 weeks old. Arriving in Australia with several stop offs at wetlands along the way, they spend our summer fattening up before heading back north around March/April.

Birds aren't the only inhabitants to benefit from the riches of the sand banks.  We watched these dingos from the safety of our boat for several evenings as they wandered along the low tide line looking for stranded fish and crab pots with delicious morsels of bait still in them left by unwary fishermen.

From Gary's Anchorage we went north about half way up Fraser to where the wreck of the Ceretodus sits.  It used to be a barge which transported sand from Fraser to the mainland.  We had stopped at this anchorage on our first voyage with Winkali when we brought her home to Cairns from Yamba. One of the reasons we wanted to do this trip was to spend some time exploring the places we had sailed past so quickly on that first trip.  We were in a hurry to get back to work then :)




Our next stop was Kingfisher Bay.  We woke in the morning to find that we had guests - about 20 to 30 of them.  

These Welcome Swallows are so named as they often fly out to 'welcome' ships, as far out as a couple of kilometres.  They will also build their nests on boats and just follow the boat around to tend their young if the apparently stationary boat leaves its harbour.

We would often hear the loud expulsion of air as either a turtle or dolphin passed us by.  Both these animals were in abundance in this area.

Ferry photo by Ian

The ferry made frequent crossings from River Heads on the mainland, to Kingfisher Bay.  The road from this terminal leads through Kingfisher Bay Resort to the rest of the island.

Jetty photo by Ian

The jetty adjacent to the wharf was home to a few die-hard fishermen.  They would even come and tie up their boats to the jetty and prefer to fish from there, rather than from their boats.

I managed to talk to the most sarcastic fisherman on the wharf when I asked what they catch there.
"Fish" he says with the tone that says I'm stupid.  Not to put out I ask (with what I hope as the right amount of return sarcasm), "What kinds of fish?"  He answers with the only answer someone of his type can answer, "all kinds".
The other two chaps who were fishing there, made themselves small so it didn't look like they were friends of his.

Ian has a bit of an interest in reptiles and likes to take photos so he can identify them in his Snake and Reptile book.  I am also interested but there are so many, I leave the research to him.  We both often take  almost identical photos when we go for walks.  Sometimes a split second makes all the difference between a great photo and the other sort.  Ian got this great photo of the skink and the ant (I got the other sort).

White-cheeked Honeyeater photo by Ian

Ian got this photo of the White-cheeked Honeyeater while I was on the phone.  These birds were prolific in the area and would perch on low branches, often not more than 2 or 3 metres of where you stood.  Not all that common with birds in the wild.






There are quite a few walking tracks around Fraser Island and we did a few of them.  In the summer when it's hot, it's not much fun to do strenuous walks, so we didn't.  

One thing that we've found in our travels is that birds often tend to hang around human habitats.  

Fraser was no different and after hearing the sweet calls of the Mistletoe Bird, we found several families of them feasting on the Midyim berries which grew around the perimeters of the tennis courts.

Kingfisher Bay resort does not grow lawns and roses.  It is an Eco-resort and the only planting they do is of native vegetation.  Their chalets are surrounded by 'bush' and wildlife is all around.

Back to the Mistletoe Birds.  The Midyim Berry which is the size of a blackcurrant and a greyish green colour, is a favourite with them.  It must have quite a sticky mucousy centre judging by the photos we took.  The birds in the collage are only babies.  When they mature, the male has a bright red breast and under-tail area, with the female having a more pinkish colour.

Male Mistletoe Bird photo taken by Ian

Red-browed Finch

Laughing Kookaburra

                                           
 Banksias made a picturesque backdrop for these birds which rested a while before being frightened off by our cameras.

Welcome Swallow

Boardwalks meandered through the  freshwater wetland area of the resort.
It was a good place for Red-browed Finches to take a birdbath.

Wetlands wouldn't be right without dragonflies and damselflies.  A couple of hours slipped by without me noticing while I had fun trying to get photos of these erratic creatures.

A Reflecting Damselfly

Quite often you find they have a favourite resting place, so when they take off, you can keep the camera focused on that stick that you know they will return to.

Even more of a challenge is to get a photo of one flying. 

What is the difference between a Damselfly and Dragonfly?

I copied this table from About.com/insects

Differences Between Dragonflies and Damselflies

Characteristic	Dragonfly	Damselfly
Eyes	most have eyes that touch, or nearly touch, at the top of the head	eyes are clearly separated, usually appearing to each side of the head
Body	usually stocky	usually long and slender
Wing Shape	dissimilar wing pairs, with hind wings broader at the base	all wings similar in shape
Position at Rest	wings held open, horizontally or downwards	wings held closed, usually over abdomen
Discal Cell	divided into triangles	undivided, quadrilateral
Male Appendages	pair of superior anal appendages, single inferior appendage	two pairs of anal appendages
Female Appendages	most have vestigial ovipositors	functional ovipositors
Larvae	breathe through rectal tracheal gills; stocky bodies	breathe through caudal gills; slender bodies

From Fraser Island, it's back to Great Keppel Island.  That's where we are now. We have a few more places on our agenda which have good anchorages in south-easterly winds on our way back to Cairns.  

We hope to get there about end of March/early April and (yes I'm saying it), hoping to work.  It's hard to "live the dream" without an income.  Of course, there's always the Dream Job!