30th April - at rest in Mourilyan Harbour - Greg near Japan - avoiding cyclones

Tuesday 30^th April

We recently had an email, across the oceans blue, from our lone-sailor Canadian friend, Greg Soraka.  He sails around and around the world, with his dear Chilean tabbycat, Ede, for company.  Every now and then (once every few years…) his wife flies out to meet him, if he’s in a reasonably calm and salubrious place.

I am just passing the latitude of Chichi Jima (just south of Japan)…. I see each day now a few hundred Short Tailed Shearwaters the same ones passing me each day going to exactly where I am going.  They are also coming from exactly where I came from on the south coast of Tasmania, but they do it much quicker.

Cheers

Greg

Alcidae III

27 N & 148 E

We are spending the day in Mourilyan Harbour.  Just to prove that everything we see and experience is NOT extreme prettiness and sunshine…here is a view from 2XS, looking towards the sugar refinery at the head of the harbour.  It is drizzly and cool.  And somewhere out there, outside the harbour, there MIGHT be a cyclone called Zane, wreaking minor havoc.  So we are staying put in our atmospheric little harbor.  This is not a bad thing.  We have food, tea, coffee, gin, books, computers.  And cameras!  Pete has just passed on to me a tricky trick he learned from Rachel and which I can do on my iPhone 5 – a panorama photo!  Here is one, going from one side of the cabin, where there are photos of our families prominently displayed, to the other side, where you will see Pete, beaming radiantly.

When we leave I will take a photo of some of the boats in this remote part of the world.  We haven’t seen rusty little hulks like this anywhere before in Australia.  They look as if they belong in a remote PNG or Solomons island.  We have also been very surprised to see that two of the other boats here - there are only about ten anchored around us – are from Tasmania.  (They are not the rusty ones, I am pleased and proud to report.)

29th April - farewell to Mission Beach - Barnards - Mourilyan Harbour - turtle

Monday 29^th April

Where was it that Ulysses stopped over for the night and ended up staying for…years??  That is a bit what Pete and I have done, in Mission Beach, at Pete and Maddie’s.  Such a  lovely place, such wonderful hospitality…

A last photo of Maddie's fabulous garden...

But we have in fact left, after yet another fabulous breakfast, and we are now anchored in Mourilyan Harbour, about twenty miles up the coast.  It is relatively cool, and overcast, so we had a very easy run with a brisk bit of wind, and a lively bit of sea.  We went past these islands (the Barnards), with their fearsome little reefs, and talked about the many shipwrecks along this bit of coast.  Thank goodness for our efficient navigation computer…

This harbor is big, and very protective from the elements.  It has a narrow passage, and as Pete and I discussed (ahem) whether or not we were looking at the correct leads into the harbour, he suddenly shouted, “What’s that?  It looks like a great big log!  Are we going to hit it??”  No we weren’t going to hit it and no it wasn’t a scary bit of flotsam or jetsam – it was a very big, slow-moving turtle, looking at us with mild interest before plunging back into the sea.

When our lovely guest Phil and I were bobbing about in the water off Dunk Island on Sunday, he told me stories about people he knows who have always wanted to buy a boat, live on a boat, do a big trip on a boat.  And how sometimes this does not have a happy ending… John, for example, had saved for years to be able to retire and go off with his beloved wife.  On a yacht… Unfortunately he didn’t spend much time “training” his hapless wife, Jenny.  They climbed aboard on the very first day of their new life, with a merry yo-ho sailor, and went off into a brisk wind and lively sea.  Poor Jenny had not even begun to find her sea legs… The boat tipped at an alarming angle and she was hurtled from one side of the cabin to the other and broke her arm very badly.  And…that was the end of the sailing dream.  

28th April - Pete's birthday - cassowary - black sapote - golden orb spider

Sunday 28^th April

And yet another splendid Mission Beach day.  Even more splendid because it is Pete’s birthday… He says he doesn’t really like being 67 but he very much realises it is far better than the alternative…

So what did I give Pete for his birthday??  A mini iPad!  It is already causing him stress and annoyance; he really doesn’t love his technology… But I hope he will learn to love it…

This photo was taken this morning, at the Mission Beach Monster Market.  He does look faintly anxious; he was in fact very happily chatting to his daughter Nicole, and to Grace, Olivia and Matilda.

Pete is, of course, O Captain My Captain.  He is also father of four, grandfather of eight, friend to more than I could begin to count, brother to two, and My Boy Peter to his mother.

He is also McGyver AND David Attenborough!!!

The proof is below…

Did I get a photo of the cassowary?  No of course not!  I was too busy going ooh and aaah; he in the meantime whipped out his dinky new videocam and – voila!!

Well...it won't download!  Bit it is a wonderful videofilm of our teenage cassowary crossing the road!  I will try it again, in a minute...

This is what I got, on my camera…

Pete Salmon once again performed culinary miracles.  We had a fabulous lunch, with very nice random guests. 

Libby and Noel, ex-Tasmanians, now living outside Cardwell, in the jungle.

Chris and Faye, new friends from Melbourne, sometimes resident in Mission Beach.

So what did we eat??  The most delicious slow-cooked lamb, with veggies, following a wonderful soup made from wilted vegetables ousted from the fridge on 2XS.  And dessert – well why didn’t I take a photo???  The most amazing Invention Test!  Pete plated up bananas in caramel sauce, delicious little ice creams, and a topping made from black sapote, also known as chocolate pudding fruit.  Yummerella!!!

My nature photography is not improving by leaps and bounds but I did manage A reasonable photo of a particularly beautiful spider.  maybe it is a golden orb, small-ish version… they grow very big, and Maddie often has them in her hair when she is gardening.  She flings them aside with gay abandon and says they make a scrunchy sort of sensation.  I am very phobic about spiders but – I thank God, very fervently – not of this sort of spider.  Golden orb spiders are just gorgeous, and they stay decorously in their webs.  They are not hairy; they do not prowl, and jump, like the spiders which turn my blood to ice.  Michael does not find them to be gorgeous.  He says when he is on army exercises in the thick bush around Townsville in the dark, these spiders are JUST at head height and he is always finding them plastered across his face.  NOT so nice!!

I also took a photo of a beautiful big fat green tree frog which lives in our outdoor bathroom. It looks like a blob; instead; here is a photo of the lovely outdoor bathroom…sans frog...

27th April - Dunk Island

Saturday 27^th April

A beautiful day in the tropics…

We took a cheery gang out on the boat, to Dunk Island.  Not sure how cheery and lovely they all look in this photo but I can assure you they were a delight, one and all.  (Phil, Jordan, Chris, Faye, Stewart, Maddie, Pete.)

I have always wanted to go to Dunk Island.  I think they always had a beautiful, emblematic picture of a Ulysses butterfly as their logo.  Sadly this is not, obviously, a real photo from my very own camera… Try as I might to attract one of these fabulous iridescent creatures, with my new gaudily coloured sarong, so far I have had no success at all.  I don’t think, thus far, I have been a very successful Attenborough-style photographer…

And how pretty is Dunk Island?  Well, very, of course!  But this resort, which looks so jaunty and welcoming, is in fact completely trashed, by cyclone Yasi, and it is derelict, abandoned, sad.

We didn’t go ashore, but I did have a beautiful swim, with Phil and his 15 year old son, Morgan.  Both of these blokes were great company.  We swam round and round the boat, looking for the big fish which had come out to welcome us, but which mysteriously disappeared, although we tempted them with chicken bones and all manner of treats.  Pete Salmon also came in for a quick dip, but everyone else sat happily on the boat.  Phil and I bobbed around in the water for ages, chatting.  There is something very therapeutic and soothing about a conversation where you are almost totally immersed in warm tropical water… When we came out the others all looked as if they were about to go to Sleepyboboland… They were reading, eating Ferrero Rochers and generally looking hot but content.