Just as well the tide was rising, as I would hate to get
stuck in here on my own for the next six hours.
When all looked safe enough, I first threw the mooring line
out onto the rocks and then I jumped out of the dinghy to secure the mooring
line. Just my luck, the rope landed right in a puddle of the most disgusting
black crocodile shit and my hands were now covered in it.
After securing the dinghy, I headed off upstream to look for
hopefully a nice water hole or small waterfall to go swimming under.
I walked for over one nautical mile and the whole system had
dried up except for a few stagnant pools of water that were not clean enough to
go swimming in. Some had fish and lots of frogs, but in another month they
would all be dry.
I can see this place would be awesome early in the dry
season with lots of waterfalls and large pools, but it just looked sad to see
it in this state.
One interesting thing I found was a rusting WW2 fuel drum
wedged into a tree about a mile upstream. I wonder who was up here during the
war?
I also saw a bower bird and lots of flowers and on the way
back, I saw a large snake (probably a taipan or a king brown) that took off
faster than I could run.
It was a nice walk and not too hot in the early morning, but
there was no point hanging around without water, so I quickly headed back to
the dinghy.
The dinghy was still safe and secure and after a good check around
for Mr Crocodile, I untied the black shit coated mooring line and quickly
jumped in the dinghy and got the heck out of this creepy place.
As soon as I got back on board Sirocco, I hoisted the main
and pulled the anchor and headed off to Jar Island. As we exited the bay, there
was a good stiff eighteen knot breeze, so I unrolled the genoa and we had a
good fast sail all the way to Jar Island.
There was another pearl lease surrounding the Island and
there were two uncharted rocks to deal with which made the approach very
interesting. I doused the sails last minute and motored the rest of the way as
it got very tight and tricky, but we managed to avoid becoming shipwrecked and
dropped anchor in front of a beautiful sandy beach.
These signs are going up everywhere in the Kimberly
Right away I went ashore in the dinghy to look for
aboriginal paintings as this Island is renowned for its very old,
thirty-thousand-year-old Bradshaw paintings.
I found a few really good ones, but most of them were badly
faded or have been vandalised or painted over. I should have gone for a swim,
but I wanted to go and find a crashed WW2 DC3 aircraft before heading to our
next anchorage for the night.
Once back out of the pearl lease, we headed across the bay
directly into a twenty-knot breeze and rough conditions. An hour later, I
dropped anchor in the lee of the mainland and I headed ashore in the dinghy
with rough directions of where to find the plane crash.
On 26 February 1942, nearly two years before Truscott
Airbase was established, an American Douglas C-53 (DC3) made a forced landing
on a mudflat on the eastern side of Vansittart Bay. The plane, VH-UGY, had been
en-route from Perth to Broome when the pilot had become disorientated in bad
weather and darkness, and put the plane down when fuel was running low. The two
crew members and two passengers survived the landing and were rescued three
days later by a QANTAS flying boat, the "CORINTHIAN".
Over the back of the sand dunes was a large saltpan and on
the far side hidden in the bush, was the aircraft, sitting as it was just after
the dust had settled, seventy-seven years ago.
These guys were so lucky to survive, as this saltpan would
have to be the ONLY place to put a plane down for hundreds of miles
around and as the plane came to a crashing halt, slamming into the small saplings
at the edge of the saltpan, it narrowly missed hitting a large boab tree by
about thirty meters.
You could see where the plane had hit trees making large
dints in the wings and nose of the aircraft, but it landed fully intact. Over
the years the plane has been pilfered with one wing having been removed, both
engines being removed and a large section of the fuselage being cut out, but
overall the condition of the plane was remarkable considering the length of
time it has sat there through countless bush fires and cyclones.
The fuselage had many bullet holes in it and I wonder if
this occurred during the war or from wankers having pot shots at it?
One funny thing that stood out was the toilet. It had a long
drop directly out the bottom of the fuselage. Imagine getting hit by a dunger
from ten thousand feet !!
One of the two radial engines was still sitting on the
ground where it was either removed or fell off during the crash landing and it
was still in remarkable condition having fourteen cylinders.
I must have spent an hour or so looking all over the plane
and I established the crash path locating some large overturned trees and some
soil erosion still clearly visible after all this time.
When I got back to Sirocco, the Kimberly cruise ship Coral
Discoverer had just arrived and the wind had now increased to around twenty-five
knots, so I decided to take shelter at Eclipse Hill Island for the night. It
was a brisk rough sail up wind, arriving at the sheltered but very rolly
anchorage just on sunset.
Before it got dark, I went ashore to the little beach to
take a look around. There were lots of shells, a large eagle’s nest high up on
a large rock pillar and one of Paspaley’s boundary buoy’s washed up at the high
tide mark.
It was a big day and I had a hard-earned thirst and there
was only one thing for that, or maybe a few things for that.
The anchorage was extremely rolly to start off, but the wind
abated overnight and turned out to be quite nice.
Track Sirocco’s progress
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