Monday 27th May

Monday 27th May

Pathway of Blue Thongs

This morning we went in to shore in the little dinghy. We tied it to a large mangrove tree and let it bob about prettily in the shallows while we went for our Blue Thong Adventure.

There is a track from the end of the Margaret Bay beach through to the other side of Cape Grenville. It is marked, most thoughtfully and whimsically, by carefully placed blue thongs, amongst other things, with a predominant theme of blue-ness. Other things being…a child’s potty; a watering can; various bits of rope; bottles; a kitchen tidy – that sort of thing. Inexplicably marking the path…

It was a beautiful walk, if prickly. (We got prickled by various vines and branches, and stung by a wide variety of ants and flies.) We were very grateful for the blue markers and occasionally shuddered at the thought of somehow wandering off track into the boggy mangrove swamp at one side of the path. 

We were following footprints. Not human ones. It took us a while to work out they were piggy feet. There must be a lot of wild pigs on this cape. We came across lots of places where they had wallowed around, either in dry dirt, or, for a different sensation, in muddy hollows. They must be very wary of humans; we didn’t catch sight of so much as a whisker, although Pete did hear a bit of a rustle in the bushes at one stage.

It took us about an hour to make our way though to Indian Bay on the other side. I had been trying to work out how everyone knew to bring a bit of blue plastic crap to mark the path, but all was explained when we arrived. The shallow beach there is covered with detritus, mostly plastic crap. I was able to find four very blue things to leave hooked onto branches on the way back, and so the tradition continues and the path keeps getting renewed with blue plastic crap.

A few years ago I saw a docudrama about some young blokes (maybe World War II, either US or UK,) who survived a plane crash on a beach somewhere up in this area. They walked back to the nearest inhabited place and had all sorts of terrifying encounters, especially with crocodiles which surprised and terrified the living daylights out of them when they finally came to a cool clear river and leapt in for a swim. Last night Rosemary told us there is a plane wreck on the beach here at Margaret Bay, WWII vintage, and that it was on its way to Portland Roads when it ran out of fuel. It must be the same story, surely?? We tried to find the plane but the tide was right in and we couldn’t walk along the beach. And we did NOT want to walk through the mangroves…

Tomorrow I think we are going north, to the Escape River.