Great Sandy Straits ...

Dinner for days!!!

Wednesday 23^rd August

Yes – they do still exist – fish I am talking about. As a farewell to Hervey Bay we today landed two very nice sized Spotted Mackerel. Cleaned and in the freezer we have about ten fish meals – yum, yum, yum.

We spent the next few days down anchored outside the Kingfisher Eco Resort, a really great place for visiting boaters as you can dinghy ashore, and with the blessing of the staff, can use the pool (they even gave us towels) and the showers. They payoff I suppose is that you could be expected to also utilise the restaurant and bar facilities as well – maybe???

We walked all around the resort and environs – going up to Dundonga Creek and the Northern Lookout one day and then south to McKenzies Jetty and the WW2 Commando School the next. McKenzies Jetty is a ruin now – but was built for the logging trade on Fraser Island around the 1920’s and closed in 1937, not before hundreds of thousands of trees had been removed. 

During the second world war one of Australia’s most famous military commando units – Z Force – trained on Fraser Island, based near the ruins of McKenzies Jetty. A story we heard was the men were required to canoe up to Maryborough and plant explosive charges – unseen – and if they were seen they had to complete the task again until they had achieved this goal – the distance to Maryborough is about 25 nautical miles – a nautical mile is nearly 2 kilometres so it would have been a hell of a challenge.

Visiting the wreck of the Palmer in Deep Creek

Next beautiful anchorage was between two creeks at South White Cliffs – Ceratodus Creek and Deep Creek, both having a resident wreck - the Ceratodus and the Palmer, both rusting hulks remain totally visible and inviting a closer look so we dinghied over. Originally built in Scotland in 1898 the Ceratodus was used to carry sand in the Great Sandy Straits back in the 1940’s – the fine white sand highly prized for iron casting. Not far up Deep Creek lie the remains of the Palmer, back in the day the Palmer plied the coast as a sugar steamer. Deep Creek may have been a deep creek once, but now is shallow and mangrove encroach from both sides as we puttered up to the wreck. We have become so used to the crystal clear waters that we have been anchoring in for the last few months it is going to be a shock when that changes.

So, south to Garry’s Anchorage – very calm water, secluded even though there were another dozen or so boats spread out along the narrow waterway. Then down to Pelican Bay, just inside the Wide Bay Bar and Inskip Point.

A lovely anchorage, Garry's Anchorage, Great Sandy Straits

“oh, you must go to Pelican Bay, it’s a lovely place to anchor, one of my favourites” said a lady on a bus in Urangan one day.  We dinghied ashore and walked around from almost Rainbow Beach to Inskip Point climbing through the incredibly soft sand on the dunes and walking along the really windswept shore, seeing the many 4WD vehicles lining up to catch the barge to Fraser Island and getting our first look at “The Bar” the very notorious bar at the southern entrance of the Great Sandy Straits.

*note to self – do not believe all you hear from random ladies on the bus – it was a terrible anchorage - oh, it was sheltered for sure but getting in and out was not for the fainthearted - the water was filthy, with thick black oozy mud, probably would be a good place in a storm – once you got the anchor set in that mud it wasn’t going to be moving any time soon. But we were not anticipating a storm so thankfully we unplugged our anchor from the thick black goo and left on the high tide next morning. Next stop Tin Can Bay.