12th June - Weipa tour

Wednesday 12^th June

Tuesday was WeipaDay.

Pete removed the broken battens and I took photos of some of the bits of the mainsail which need repairing.  And a photo of Pete holding one of the wounded battens…Oh deary me…

Our first stop was to the hardware shop, not far from our anchorage.  We got there easily enough, with only one minor mishap.  Pete was trudging ahead carrying an empty gas bottle, the batten, a big empty backpack.  I followed meekly behind with two empty fuel bottles and my own empty backpack.  And I very carefully misjudged a big fat metal rope thingy slung across the path and fell VERY inelegantly, with my dress up over my head.  I was totally winded, speared with sharp bits of grass, and sporting a very badly scraped shin.  I moaned away reasonably quietly to myself, but nobody heard.  Except maybe two white bellied sea eagles soaring thoughtfully overhead… The thing is, when you fall, as an adult, it is always very shocking.  I wasn’t sure if I was alive or not; in fact I was perfectly fine, and only a bit scraped.  And – best of all – nobody had seen my dress up over my head…

(My favourite falling-as-an–adult story belongs to my poor kind mother… She was feeding the chooks and fell over on the slippery stony path.  Ouchy ouch!  She had fallen right onto her knees, which are always just a bit sore… She feebly called to dogs to help, expecting that they would behave like Lassie, or Rin Tin Tin, and rush off to get the cavalry.  But no.  They rushed to her side, and were overjoyed to find her prone on the path.  An opportunity to sit on top of her and lick her face!  They were both very big dogs – a white German shepherd, and a boxer-labrador cross, and they made it almost impossible for her to struggle to her feet…)

The hardware store people were friendly and polite but they didn’t have battens.  Or gas, as it turned out.  But maybe gas would arrive later in the day.  We left our bottle there, just in case, and were about to walk to the shops – about 25 minutes away – when a nice local lad offered us a ride in his ute.  People are so kind, aren’t they?  He took us to the petrol station to drop off the fuel bottles as well, and showed us all of the local landmarks along the way.  Darrell works as a driver in the Rio Tinto mine and has lived in Weipa for twenty years.  Loves it.

We hopped out of the car and went about our business – post office, pharmacy, supermarket, as industriously as possible when Pete suddenly said, “Where is the batten??”  He was no longer holding it aloft…had left it in Darrell’s ute…and all we knew about Darrell was what I have written above. Nice bloke, about forty, has lived in Weipa 20 years, drives trucks for Rio Tinto… Pete rang the hardware store, and somebody there knew a bit more – a surname, a phone number – and we are now waiting to hear back re the whereabouts of that pesky batten.

We are supposed to be leaving tomorrow, to cross the Gulf.   (Are you ready and waiting to take over BlogMistress tasks, Ann-Marie??)  I am feeling apprehensive; this will be our first overnight passage – 48 hours, which is inescapably two days/two nights.   I have managed so well thus far…all the way from Hamilton Island to Weipa, up and over Cape York.  But…overnighters are the real test…

So…as I was writing the above, dear Darrell rang…more than willing to turn up at the boat ramp at 8am, batten aloft!  So amazing…everywhere we go, people are SO keen to do things for Captain Pete!

The rest of our WeipaDay involved a guided tour, from the caravan park, in a little air-conditioned bus with a very informative, cheery driver, Gary.  Two and a half hours of Weipa And Environs, and an extensive drive around the mine.

I was wrong re burials and births.  Births are still not a happening thing in Weipa, but they now have an above-ground cemetery.  With two lone graves… The indigenous people have their own systems, but most local people in Weipa are not really local.  They come from…Somewhere Else and their bodies get shipped off (or barged off…) accordingly.

There are several big schools in Weipa, with nine HUNDRED students!  This is one third of the entire Weipa population… We drove past the schools and they looked very bright and cheery, a whirlwind of activity and sport.

As for the mine…I was mightily impressed.  It seems a very benign system.  The mining company (Rio Tinto, since about 2000,) scrapes off the topsoil, digs out a few metres of bauxite, replaces the topsoil, and it all gets re-vegetated.  VERY swiftly!  Everything growls so quickly up here.  The bush teems with native wildlife, and feral wildlife – dingoes, horses, pigs, kangaroos…and crocodiles.  MANY crocs!

This is what the mine looks like:

With BIG trucks:

Gary told us, with great relish, how many crocs there are, where they are, what they do.  Apparently recently Rio Tinto developed a lovely new picnic ground and swimming hole for the miners thirty eight KILOMETRES up a little freshwater creek.  And had to shut it down within months because four enterprising saltwater crocs climbed up the creek to look for yummy food…

Pete prevailed upon Gary to drop us off at the waterfront, to save us from a long walk back to the dinghy.  And good thing too!  The tide was coming in more swiftly than we had expected and there was our darling dinghy, slightly awash but valiantly waiting…

ACCOLADES!!

Our friend Emma Riley, Pete’s long-term tenant and our sometime adopted daughter, has passed her probationary period and is now a fully fledged member of the Australian Navy!  We are VERY proud!