The Drought Breaks …

Saturday 20th May 2017

We didn’t leave early – it was about 9.30am when we left Mackay Marina bound for Scawfell. Travelling in convoy with Titch and Bev Timmermans on their Leopard 40, “EverRest”, we sailed the 27 nautical miles in 3 ½ hours, not a bad effort, and so pleasant to be out sailing again.

We decided to try a new lure purchased on recommendation from the lovely little man at the fishing shop in Mackay – The Compleat Angler – where we had also got a landing net - never again  would we have the frustration of getting the catch inches from the boat then losing it. Within minutes of putting said lure out, Jamie was shouting “I’ve got one, I’ve got one” and a perfect spotted mackerel was in the boat – woo hoo - dinner sorted!!

The beautiful tropical island of Scawfell

Scawfell is the most southern of the Whitsundays and we were the only two boats in this magnificent anchorage where the water was the most amazing colour – turquoise to aqua and all colours in-between and so clear that it was hard to ascertain accurately the depth. On shore, we found fresh water streams flowing under and over rocks and a sandy beach rather than the smashed coral beaches often found. We truly felt like we were on a tropical island as we walked along the sand under palm trees - we even found a coconut but sadly upon opening it  - it stunk !!!

A little off-putting was the sighting of a couple of reef shark - just happily cruising around metres from shore right in front of where we standing and saying we were going to go snorkelling in the morning - haha - a slight change of plans methinks!! They hung around for about fifteen minutes but by the time we had got the dinghy and started back to SOL they had gone on their merry way.

The fishing was good here as well - a couple of nice sized sweetlip and something else we think was a trevally happened to end up on our lines at sunset, all good eating!!

We spent two nights here on Scawfell, and yes, we did go snorkelling - we just went to the other side of the bay to where we had seen the sharks and though the snorkelling was not great it was the best coral we had seen so far.
The next day, when our nice secluded anchorage became crowded - another five boats deciding to join us - we moved off to Brampton Island, another lovely sail across with the wind almost behind us and woo hoo - another spotted mackerel ended up in our freezer!!

So reassuring that there are still some fish left in the sea, and that we have not managed to completely forget how to catch them - not that we enjoy the killing of them, but we do certainly like the eating of them, so the end justifies the means I guess.

That afternoon, we went ashore armed with a large screwdriver - our quarry - oysters - the rocks were covered with them but most that we had seen the previous day were very small and our mission was to find and collect enough so I could make oyster fritters for an entrée before having Bev and Titch over for fish dinner.

Brampton Resort - looking rather sad

We had a walk around the almost abandoned resort in the afternoon - before the cyclone the resort had been closed since about 2010 and in the hands of various caretakers, and Debbie had caused further degradation - however, talking with the caretakers friend we learned that there are plans afoot for a "ten star resort - where each unit has its own butler, maid and private chef etc." so things could look up in the future - if you can believe everything that you hear. (This to tie in with the tip for the Goodwood Handicap run in Morphettville, Adelaide, on Saturday 20th May, where we were assured that Hey Doc would prevail - however he came in 6th so, so much for the hot tip!!)

Titch, Jamie and I walked across to Western Bay the next day. The island is full of butterflies, all colours and sizes, pity that they don't stay still long enough for me to get a decent photo of them, and of course when they are still they fold up their wings so you don't get to see the colours anyway. Very disappointing. There are heaps of magnificent maidenhair ferns, other ferns, huge trees and fascinating coloured fungi. we saw kangaroo, some turkeys and these horrid little green ants who make nests in the trees and in my opinion look ugly even though they are small. And lots of rather large spiders that were very ugly and pretty scary.

Titch, Jamie, Linda and Bev

We enjoyed a lovely evening on EverRest, dining with Bev and Titch, playing cribbage (and drinking a lot of red wine) on Wednesday evening before saying goodbye to Bev and Titch on Thursday - we had enjoyed their company over the last week - as they were going north and we sailed down to St Bees and Keswick Islands - anchoring in Keswick for the night. Not the best anchorage due to the huge tidal range here up by Mackay.  When we arrived it was almost low tide and the tidal rise was 5.9 metres, consequently we had to leave the depth plus 6 metres under us multiplied by 4 for the scope of chain needed to ensure holding - we only have 50 metres of chain in total so that meant we had to drop the anchor in a maximum of 4 metres at low tide - not physically doable as that would have placed us just on the coral/rock ledge such was the geography around us. So we dropped the anchor in 7 metres of water put out all our chain and spent a restless night - luckily the wind was light and held us nicely off the shore at low tide and early Friday morning we said goodbye to Keswick and enjoyed a magnificent sail back to Mackay.