Once out of Jim’s Bay I unfurled the genoa and in the light
wind and going against the two-knot current with the motor running, we were
only doing around four and a half knots.
It was a pleasant run the twenty odd miles to Koolama Bay
where we planned to spend the night waiting for the high tide tomorrow morning
to enter into the King George River.
We dropped the pick at Calamity-Bay (just three miles short of Koolama Bay) to take a look at the site where nearly two
hundred people were marooned during WW2.
The MV Koolama with 90 crew and 100 passengers was
bombed by the Japanese during WW2 and beached at what now is called
Calamity-Bay.
93 passengers walked overland all the way back to
Kalumburu, 14 injured passengers were rescued by a mission lugger from
Kalumburu and the ship was re-floated and sailed by the remaining crew to
Wyndham where it was sunk by the Japanese during another bombing raid.
We had a nice walk around the beach looking for some plaques
commemorating the event, but to reach them required walking through a crocodile
infested mangrove creek, so we gave that a miss.
Luke from Lizard flew his drone from the beach, and later
that night when we viewed the footage, there was a huge fresh crocodile track
only meters from where he was standing.
From Calamity-Bay it was only three miles across to Koolama
Bay where we anchored for the night to wait for the high tide tomorrow to enter
the King George River.
In the afternoon, I went for a troll and never got a touch,
so I headed over to the rocks on the shore and spent the next hour getting
oysters off the rocks. I filled about half a bucket and then headed back to
Sirocco to clean them ready to eat.
Bruce and Luke invited us over to Lizard for dinner, so
after a quick shower we headed off over in the tender.
We had a great night chatting with them and headed back off
to Sirocco around 21:30 for a good night’s sleep.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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