The morning didn’t start overly well. We were getting ready
to go fishing and sent to boys to the toilets to brush their teeth. At a lot of
places there is a mop that you are supposed use in your cubicle after you have
showered. As the boys were walking out after brushing their teeth a concerned
citizen (read cranky old hag) decided to have a go at them for not mopping up
after themselves. And have a go she did, tearing into them like a woman
possessed. Jack came back in tears, and luckily for her I was up at the shop. By the time I returned she was back in her van, where ever
that was and luckily for her sake ‘we’ decided it was better off to leave it
alone. We have had this a couple of times where grey nomads, who on the whole
are absolutely magnificent, have a go at the kids or even us. This was the
straw that broke the camels back and I alredy feel sorry for the next concerned
citizen who wants to take up my childs behaviour with them and not me....
With that behind us all four of us got on the water and
headed down stream about 6 kms to where Poison Creek enters the river. A lady
had said that her husband had dropped a barra there the other day and Jacko had
latched onto that and we were going there. It was a nice run down the river,
even though as the driver it is always pretty nerve racking as you have no idea
what is lurking beneath the water or if you are about to cross an unmarked rock
bar at full speed. We trolled for a while, with the major problem being that we
(me), in my crankiness at the old so and so, had forgotten to pack the lure box, so we only had the
three on the rods.... 10 minutes later and we were down to 2....but we managed
to keep fishing for a couple more hours with those two working really hard to
get them of a few snags.
On the way back De spotted a nice 3m salty sunning
itself on the bank, we did a quick u turn to get a photo but by the time we had
turned it was slithering into the water and not wanting to have any nasty
surprises I hot footed it out of there!
 |
| There is a big salty there, believe me! |
With an empty bag we headed back and loaded up Rufus, then
Gator and hit the road. We had enjoyed our time at King Ash but it was spoilt
by one cranky old so and so. We headed into Borroloola and did a bit of a stock
up before we hit the Carpentaria Highway taking us all the way across the base
of the Gulf of Carpentaria back into our home state, Queensland!
The road was a bit rough in places with bull dust and
corrugations being overtaken on the ‘roughness stakes’ by rocks, rocks and more
rocks, in their millions! We had decided to take our time crossing this stretch
of the road rather than just driving across it to tick it of some list of
things we have done. So about 70kms later and we came to the first river
crossing, The Foelshe, which had a nice area cleared for camping so we set up,
grabbed our fishing gear and headed to the river. A couple had snagged the best
camping spot, on the rocky creek bank right beside the river, but their
serenity was short lived. We had a ball casting tiny lures while De chatted
away with the couple. At one point Jack got a snag so I ventured in nervously
to retrieve it, realising we were casting into 20cm of water. So we moved
further up the river and it wasn’t long before Sam had a little black bream on
and soon after as the eastern sky turned hues of blue and purple I managed,
ironically I am certain, caught a “Mouth Almighty”. Jack continued to cast with
no luck, it really has been a tough couple of months for him with the rod, poor
bugger.
 |
| One of my favourite pics |
We headed back up the hill to our camp where Deb and Andrew, a couple and
their kids who we had first met at the Kunanurra rodeo, were also set up. We
had seen them in Borroloola and Andrew had mistakenly filled up his diesel tank
with unleaded, so as well as having to dump $150 worth of fuel he also had to
pay a small fortune to have it drained! The kids had a great riding bikes and
cracking the whip, or doing both at once which is the latest trick, before we
all headed off sleep in the perfect silence of the Australian bush.
No comments:
Post a Comment