I woke up around 06:00 when the sun came up as I wanted to
go ashore and take a look at the aboriginal art. Last night there was a
passenger ship anchored about six miles away and I was half expecting them to
come here this morning, so I wanted to explore the area while we had it to
ourselves.
The tide was way out and had only just started to come in
and there was a large fringing coral reef I had to get over before I could get
to the beach. The tide was racing in faster than a man can walk and as the
dinghy was being swept in with the tide, I had to quickly negotiate a passage
through the jiggered coral and try not to puncture the boat.
While crossing the reef, I saw possibly the largest queen
fish I have ever seen (well over 1.5m) and this was probably the only time I
didn’t take my fishing rod………Doh !!
Using an oar, I managed to make passage over the deeper part
of the reef and into the sandy beach where I ran out a very long anchor rope to
some large boulders some distance up the beach to try to avoid having to swim
out to retrieve the dinghy later on.
Finding the artwork was a simple matter of following the footprints
in the sand. They were all in sandstone caves in a large rocky wall along the
right-hand side of the beach.
What was different with this art is it is almost all contact
art, that is drawings of contact with what are probably Dutch, French or
Portuguese as they are all wearing large hats and smoking pipes.
I was a bit disappointed in how faded they were, but they
were good to see just the same. There was a burial cave there also containing a
lot of bones and two child size sculls.
Way up the back was an ancient aboriginal sacred site with
rocks laid out in patterns on the ground.
Bigge Island is a long way from the mainland and maybe the
people used to walk out here during the last ice age? The Island is not what
I’d call a nice-looking Island either, but rather a very large jaggered pile of
rocks.
By the time I had finished exploring and returned to the
dinghy, it was floating in waste deep water, but as I had placed the anchor on
the rock boulders, I only had to wade out up to my knees, climb the rock
boulders and pull the dinghy in and step in. No dinner for Mr Crocodile today.
Immediately I raised the anchor and we headed off towards Prudhoe
Island. A ten-knot breeze was right on the nose so I didn’t even bother raising
the sails for this short passage.
Along the way we passed two trailer sailors and we chatted
on the radio for a while until they reached Wary Bay. They had put in at Wyndham
and were sailing the Kimberly coast before pulling out at Derby, a great way to
go if you are on a tight budget and don’t mind a small boat.
We reached Prudhoe Island only six miles away and there was
a fishing boat anchored there, the same one we saw down at the Hunter River.
They waved to us, but we didn’t talk on the radio. I wish we did as I would
have liked to know what they were fishing for and where they were from.
Probably fishing for barramundi or mud crabs, I guess?
Prudhoe Island would have to be one of the best anchorages I
have ever seen, with a huge protected area surrounded by three Islands. We
didn’t stop, but I took the opportunity to raise the main in the sheltered
waters before departing.
As we left Prudhoe Island the wind direction shifted and was
right on the bloody noise again, so I pointed as high up as I could, motor
sailing and trying to avoid several rocks and reefs until I had enough angle to
switch off the motor and sail for the last couple of hours.
As we approached Winyalkan Island, the Coral Princes was
tucked up in its lee and their tender was out showing all the punters some of
the aboriginal art in the area. We sailed past the Coral Princes and went
another few miles into South Montague Sound past, a really beautiful little
Island with two amazingly beautiful beaches and I rounded the corner and dropped
the pick in its lee.
Right away I sped off in the tender to check it out and I
came straight back to Sirocco, loaded my deck chair, and grabbed a heap of
beers and went back and lit a lovely camp fire high up on the beach where I
pondered the meaning of life while I watched the sun go down. It really was one
of the highlights of this Kimberly trip so far.
I headed back to Sirocco just on dark and there was a
massive tawny shark cruising around the back of the boat when I arrived. These
sharks are fantastic and so good to watch and pat.
Fonster missed both radio skeds today and it was a fairly
early night to bed after a bit of late-night star gazing and quite a few
falling stars.
Track Sirocco’s progress
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