Tuesday
23rd April
No
birthdays today but news of two splendid babies, hot off the press, most
welcome additions to the family for my friends:
Diane
has a granddaughter, Eliza Jane
and
Elsa
a grandson, Hugh Tasman
Today all my photos are of scenery, and
water. More extreme prettiness!
We left Magnetic Island early and
cruised up between the Palm Islands on flat, velvety water, just gorgeous.
These islands are very beautiful, but we
had been warned not to anchor there – a bit of crime, a bit of unrest. Fortunately we didn’t need to put these dire
warnings to the test; we got to a very beautiful anchorage near Haycock Island,
through the Hinchinbrook Passage, by three.
Pete is very happily on the couch with a beer and a book (The Dog Who Knew Too Much; he is
laughing a lot. He did not laugh a lot
while reading Gone Girl!! And now I am reading Gone Girl, and am riveted, and not laughing at all either…)
The Passage was breathtakingly
beautiful, with thickly forested mountains right down to the edge of the
water. Not really forest at all –
jungle, more like it!
We are anchored between a lovely little
island and…a mangrove swamp. It is
stiflingly hot; on the way I had to tip several bottles of water over my head
to keep from leaping overboard into the velvety sea with a demented
shriek. (I can’t help it; I am from
Northern Europe; hot weather is a mystery and a bother to my DNA.)
And have I been able to have a
refreshing swim? Well no of course
not…the water is brown and murky; there are mangroves very close by. And NOBODY swims in these regions…Yesterday I
heard an interview with a surprisingly cheerful French deck hand in the
Northern Territory, who had been attacked by a crocodile as he tried to swim to
his dinghy. It grabbed hold of his head
and lay on top of him. He fought for his
life, and won, obviously, otherwise he would not have been all cheery on News Radio. He said he was lucky it was such a small
crocodile, only two and a half metres…
So…no swim, but I did have a very nice
cold shower on deck.
I would have thought that a 1 meter croc holding your head might kill you, let alone 2.5 meters! Yowzers!
ReplyDeleteObviously that's 'Claire'...
ReplyDeleteYes and did you hear his bosses response when asked what the experience was like? "I was very relieved, it's hard to get a good deck hand."
ReplyDelete