The boys were keen as mustard to get up and play with the
kids next door before they rolled out so at some seemingly unbelieveable hour,
7:30 I think it was, they were out playing like there was no tomorrow.
By 8 we were on our own again so we scoffed breakfast and
headed back down to the river for a serious fish...no more chasing the
littlies. We moved further up the river to where we could see deeper holes and
Jack and I cast our lures while Sam had a ball riding his bike through the
massive puddles in the rocky creek bed that had been left by the wet season. We
cast and moved and cast and moved but nothing was interested in our tasteless
pieces of hard plastic. The only benefit was we managed to find a large hand
reel by the side of the river. We estimated it would have cost $20 in the shop
to set up so in the end we were happy with the outcome!
We surrendered, heading back to camp and rolling the 40 or
so kms to the Robinson River crossing. The river was heavily lined with
pandanus palms so it was going to be pretty hard to find a decent fishing spot
so we dropped the van at one of the free camp sites on the top of the ridge
overlooking the river and went for an explore. We followed one of the bush
tracks down to a small opening but after a couple of casts I concluded the 4m
wide gap was not going to satisfy 3 fishermen. We followed the track down for
another 7 or 8kms but it seemed to be getting further away from the river. My
hope was that it would take us to a hidden waterfall that would be a barra
oasis but no such thing eventuated..whimper...
We headed back to the van for lunch and another older couple
had just stopped at the ‘site’ just up from ours so we had a good chat and then
went back to the van to pack some lunch and head to the other side of the river
in search of a good site. Jacko’s new habit is as soon as we pull up somewhere,
no matter if it is the middle of nowhere, a caravan park or a shopping centre
is to get his whip out and start cracking it.....De and I just love it!!! As
per usual he was cracking away, which apparently was a cause for concern for a
brumby on the other side of the river as it started to whinny a lot. What also
happened was the older couple we had just spoken to had decided to move on and
on their way past Trevor decided to get out and give Jack a bit of a whip
cracking display as well as a bit of lesson. It was great, here we were 100kms
from the nearest sign of life and we were getting a whip cracking lesson from
an old mountain man from the south....priceless...and it also managed to fulfil
the “are we there yet” caption where an old man taught them how to crack a
whip.
With Trevor moving on and a few more trick in Jack’s bag we
headed to the other side of the river and found a nice shady spot to pull up
where there was some hope of casting a line...the bit about catching a fish was
merely secondary! De was on lunch duty so we started to cast our little lures
in the hope of getting some live bait for our newly ‘acquired’ hand reel.
We could see them
chasing the lure, we were even getting heaps of bumps, but none of them would
take them. We scoffed our lunch and were back on duty in no time and after
about an hour or more of trying we finally had one with Jacko securing, again
ironically, a Mouth Almighty, on a small plastic.
We ran back to the truck and
after a pic had him hooked and flying through the air in a matter of seconds...surely
with this yummy piece of live bait we’ll get one. We continued to try and get
some more liveys with no success. We were all having a rest in the shade of the
truck when I noticed the line with the live bait on it slowly become taught. I
dashed over and gently felt the line. It wasn’t heavy enough to be a barra but
sometimes they hold the fish in their mouth for a while....maybe....i pulled it
in and while I can be certain it WASN’T a barra we had just missed something by
the narrowest of margins as shown by the pic below. Oh well we had really
enjoyed our fishing adventure but it was time to roll a bit further in search of
tonight’s camp.
We crossed another couple of crossings, bounced around on
some very rocky patches and were rattled by some more bull dust pulling up at
Calvert Crossing for the night. The site was set well up the hill from the
crossing which was at the bottom of a pretty serious ‘valley’ for a road
anyway. We chatted with one of the other campers set up and De and the boys walked
down to the crossing for a look collecting some fire wood on the way back. If
there is one thing the boys have learnt on this trip, it is how to light a camp
fire and really enjoy the responsibility of getting one going from scratch.
It
wasn’t long before dinner was cooked and eaten and after big days fishing...with nothing but good
memories in the bag, we were all heading to sleep.
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