Well today was a pretty big day. I woke up around 06:00, had
a coffee and then went to fish the low tide. I got snapped off a few times
losing some really big fish and a few more lures.
Finally, I got smart putting on a heavy mono trace and no
more bust offs on the sharp rocks and oysters after that.
I got a mixed bucket of trevally, cod and stripy's, and a
huge GT. Then at the bottom of the tide I went for a walk on the rocks and
filled a bucket with large oysters, heading back to Sirocco around 09:00.
After cleaning the fish and shucking half of the oysters, we
had breakfast, then I headed off in the dinghy to five-man creek to try and
find some aboriginal rock paintings.
The tide was still coming in, so I tided the dinghy to a rock
and headed off out bush. It was hard walking over the huge boulders and
spinifex scratching up my legs. Finally, after about fifteen minutes I found
some paintings in some over hangs and caves, but not the one I was looking for.
It was bloody hot and I didn’t have any water with me. I
scrambled around for another hour, finding lots of very good and interesting
paintings, mostly Bradshaw, but a lot had been painted over or vandalised by
the aborigines.
The whole area has been occupied for thousands of years and
there are shell middens tens of metres deep. It’s amazing to see so much human
occupation in such a remote area. All the caves still have scattered shells
& bones and signs of fire.
Eventually I found the painting I was looking for, an ornate
canoe with five blokes rowing it, some wearing hats and smoking pipes. I think
this could either be an ornate canoe from either PNG or Indonesia or it’s a
long boat from a European ship.
I find these contact painting very interesting as well as
the Bradshaw paintings. Who were these people and why do the aboriginals not
want to recognise them and paint over them?
Are they Africans or people from PMG with fancy head dress?
The famous five men in a boat painting
There are thousands of middens all over the place
Anyway, mission complete, I headed back to the dinghy and it
was safe and sound, and then I headed back to Sirocco. Once back on Sirocco, we feasted on oysters kill Patrick for
lunch, and they were pretty bloody good.
I tried a few other types of shellfish as well as the oysters
After lunch, I pulled anchor and headed over to between
Wollaston Island and Dog Ear Island where I dropped the pick and headed off in
the dinghy again to check out some more aboriginal paintings.
This was another hard slog up over boulders (every 10th
boulder was loose and ready to roll) and through the high spikey spinifex in
the midday heat.
Eventually I found the caves and there were some pretty good
paintings scattered all over the place. I just can’t imagine sleeping in the
dirt, scrounging for food in crocodile infested waters and being eaten my
midgies constantly, and no Internet, what a life.
[
I have never seen carvings like this before? I wonder if they represent seasons? Initiations? Hunting trips? Visits? or bowels of clam chowder?
After an hour or so,
I headed back to Sirocco and by now the tide was falling and it was urgent that
we headed off. I had decided to take a short cut through the very narrow
channel between Wollaston Island and Dog Ear Island. It will save us a couple
of hours tomorrow, but if there is not enough water, we could end up grounded
or even worse, rip a keel out or hole the boat.
My timing was spot on and we had three meters of water
racing through at five knots with lots of jaggered rocks on either side. From here it was a short one-hour passage across to a
sheltered little bay on the main land where we dropped the pick for the night.
There are so many really good aboriginal paintings
(especially Bradshaw) in this area and I’d love to spend more time exploring
and searching for them, but we need to keep moving on.
We ran out of water today, so we had to run the water maker
for five hours to fill both tanks and to charge our batteries at the same time.
It was a big day and now I’m totally knackered. We are
having curried trevally & vegetable soup for dinner.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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