My last night on the east coast was spent in Albany Passage. I managed to time my struggle through the passage on the spring tides, the strongest tides of the month, and they were running against me at about 4–5 knots. As bad as that could have been, I found that the current was so strong that as it flowed around the rocks it sucked back on itself and I could use these back currents to get to a beach and the campground of Somerset Bay. I felt that completing the east coast was an achievement worth celebrating. I found some shelter from the rain, started a fire and did what I could to make dinner extra special. That was tricky as I was getting down to the basics in the larder but I made an effort and put the usual ingredients together in a different order. The result was the same, but it felt special.
The next day I worked the tides and made the small town of Seisia on 19 April. There are very strong currents around Cape York, and if you paddle against them then life is going to be very hard. By getting the currents right I managed to get a push out of Albany Passage as I admired the coastline. It would be a very interesting area to island-hop and explore but you would need a good understanding of the flow of water. The current helped me past Possession Island, which was a huge relief. I had sort of guessed that was the way the current would be going for me, but if I’d got it wrong then I would’ve been in for a real struggle because I would’ve had to work the slack water along the shore. Hugging the shore to keep out of the current would have put me close to any crocs lurking in the shallows, a most undesirable path. A few very large splashes behind the kayak kept me on my toes. I never saw what caused them but I kept telling myself, It’s only turtles, only turtles …
Seisia is a friendly place with all I needed to clean up, do some repairs and rest for a day. It was also empty of tourists. The wet season floods the roads to Cape York for six months every year, and this means nobody can drive in or out of the huge area during that time. All supplies, mail and transport is by air or boat and the caravans don’t turn up until it stops raining. This was good for me as I had the place to myself, apart from a few very rare palm cockatoos and the locals, who were keen to talk to someone new.
It wasn’t long before Gary and Sara were alerted that I was in town by Etta and Dave, who run Coral Sea Kayaking at Mission Beach. They found me easily and gave me a quick tour of the town, followed by a dip in the local watering hole, before inviting me round for dinner. Although the town is surrounded by the clear, warm waters of the Arafura Sea, the watering hole is popular, being up the river where the crocs don’t go.
After leaving Seisia I would be tackling the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline. The main problem with the eastern side of the gulf is the winds. As I made my way up the east coast of Queensland, the trade winds blew from the southeast pushing me north. Now those same trade winds would be blowing towards me as I headed south towards Weipa and on to Karumba. Would the winds be strong enough to slow my progress to the extent that I would take too long and run out of water? That was my main worry, but I also didn’t know how easy it would be finding safe landing spots, where the crocs would leave me alone, among the mud flats and mangroves.
But there was only one way to find out, so I set off on 21 April. I’d been warned Crab Island is not a good place to linger due to the big lizards that eat the turtles nesting there. But nobody told me of the 25-knot squall and blinding rain I would encounter while trying to negotiate the maze of sandbars exposed by the outgoing tide.
I wasn’t off to a good start, and the day almost didn’t end well either when a croc came to say hello as I headed in for a landing at Vrilya Point. It was a bit of a weak effort from a small 2-metre croc. He didn’t come closer than 30 metres, but even so I forced another kilometre out of my arms before ducking in to the beach a respectable distance from the resident. It was a nice sandy beach, and I reached it during high tide so I didn’t have a long carry to the campsite. The wind hadn’t been too much of an issue, apart from the squall, and it stopped raining long enough for me to set up camp and cook dinner. My fears evaporated.
It is always the same: I would expect the worst, and the challenge would become more daunting the longer I left it. But when I got stuck in my fears would disappear and I would do what I needed to do to make progress.
A couple of days later I was at Turtle Creek, south of Mapoon. I had tried to get to the town of Mapoon but the fight against the current coming out of Port Musgrave was too much and I got swept past Cullen Point. I was getting through 5 litres of water a day in this area, which was a litre a day less than the section heading north from Cooktown. It was still just as hot, but the higher humidity on the east coast had probably made me work harder. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the extra water. That extra litre a day may not sound much but it meant after five days I had an extra day’s supply of water.
I didn’t go far up Turtle Creek as the current was running out. I spied a camp spot just inside the entrance, which was great because the further up the rivers you go the more likely you are to come across those snapping handbags. I could see the buildings of an Indigenous camp not far away so I went looking for drinking water. It was unusual for someone to turn up at the camp without a four-wheel-drive or motorboat and after a quick explanation of what I was about I was invited to stay in one of their permanent tents and have lunch. With dark clouds gathering and bolts of lightning nearby, I didn’t need to be asked twice.
The creek was full of movement as night approached and a 3-foot-high wire fence around the camp didn’t need any explanation. The approaching storm and evening light gave the creek a menacing feel, which was justified by the splashes and swirls of disturbance made by the unseen food chain at work.
My hosts made me feel right at home. I was soon entertaining the kids with my digital camera, which they quickly got the hang of, amusing themselves and upsetting the old men by taking their photos. We swapped stories and sucked some beer. All the drinking water had to be brought in via the road and I noticed that, although they could only spare 2 litres of water, all the men drank beer and smoked nonstop, from the time I arrived to well after I went to bed. I guess any excess water had to make way for the essentials on the truck drive from Mapoon.
It was a good night and I had a ball. My respect for their traditional skills escalated when one of the men—who could hardly walk after a long afternoon on the grog—jumped up, grabbed a spear and vaulted over the fence. I made a mental note of where my first aid kit was just as he jumped back over the fence with a huge mud crab on the end of his spear. Stone-cold sober I couldn’t have managed it. He dropped the crab on the ground for the women to deal with, his part being done. He then sat down only to promptly fall backwards off the chair, to peals of laughter all round.
I struggled to get to Weipa on Anzac Day. As I turned into Albatross Bay the wind showed itself and hampered my progress. Blowing at 20 knots it slowed me down, but I had to give it a big effort as I had only 2 litres of water left. Seeing my desperation the wind called on its mate, the current, to join in the fight to stop me reaching Weipa. Between them my progress was painful; it took six hours to paddle the last 30 kilometres to reach land. When I found the Weipa campsite I was feeling dehydrated, my drinking water had run out hours before, but I still had to ferry my kit and the kayak across 500 metres of mud flats to the sand. It was dead low tide. I’d just paddled the entire six hours it takes for the tide to run out of Albatross Bay before it turns around and spends the next six hours filling it up again. My timing couldn’t have been any worse and I’d paid the price. It was a difficult paddle but after weeks of paddling 50 kilometres a day I was running on empty, and compounded by having to ration supplies and water, it hit me hard.
I needed a rest but I kept moving, set up the tent, grabbed a shower, organised some laundry and then went out for a meal, only just making it back to the tent to fall onto my mat, letting exhaustion do its stuff. I spent two days at Weipa, which were badly needed. But after the first day I’d forgotten all about my tiredness and was plan
ning the next section down to Karumba.
Crocodiles are a significant consideration in this area, not just for the occasional kayaker but for fishermen, pet owners and any edible thing on or near the sea. It’s often the case that tourists arrive in Australia terrified of venturing further than Pitt Street in central Sydney due to stories of the top ten most venomous snakes, spiders and the dreaded drop bear. However, you have to look very hard to find dangerous critters when you’re in the bush. Odds are your average tourist is more likely to meet an untimely end on their holiday due to the much-maligned falling fridge than from any of the deadly wildlife. But when you get to croc country, you find it’s not all hype and if you don’t use the equivalent of road rules when dealing with crocs it may just be a matter of time.
A few months before I arrived in Weipa, a fisherman was attacked by a croc less than a kilometre from where I was camping and only 200 metres from the local pub. He was fishing up a creek only 50 metres from the beach. I’d waded across this creek a few times as I walked from the camp down the beach to the pub. The fisherman was snapped on the leg then the croc tried to pull him into the creek but he grabbed onto a mangrove root and held on. The croc, unable to gain purchase on the ground as the banks were steep, could only try and swim backwards to pull his dinner in. The creek was only 10 metres wide at this point; it was such a small creek that when the croc left, the water level dropped.
The shouts of the fisherman alerted those in the pub who wandered over, pulled the fisherman out of the croc’s jaws and were back at the bar before their beers had gotten warm. The fisherman admitted during an interview that during his life-or-death struggle he threw his little dog in the stream, hoping the croc would go for an easier but perhaps less satisfying meal. That was it for the hapless fisherman; any sympathy he had was lost as the focus turned to ‘Who was looking after the poor dog while that bastard was recovering in hospital?’
The lesson for me was, ‘Anywhere, anytime, assume crocs’. I am usually aware of what’s going on around me but being part of the food chain takes it to a new level. It was so ingrained in me after travelling for thousands of kilometres in areas where crocs are common that for months after getting back to Sydney I was still checking out logs in the water.
Recharged after my rest in Weipa, I set off on 28 April with six of my 6-litre water bags almost full and two weeks of food, very mindful of the remote country I had to cover before getting to Karumba. The rain had stopped, and after months of packing away wet gear it took me a while to get used to the idea of dry weather. It didn’t rain again for the rest of the trip.
My days on the water would start at 7 am, when there would be a light wind blowing from the east-south-east, which would die away during the morning. Then it was replaced around 3 pm by a slightly stronger southwest headwind, but by that time I would have done my 50 kilometres and be looking for a place to land.
I picked up a stomach bug in Weipa and had a few days of diarrhoea. This is socially inconvenient in my other world but it was a serious problem in the world I was currently travelling through. It left me feeling weak and losing nutrition before my body had time to absorb it, but more serious was the dehydration. It took a couple of days to get over, but I still managed to cover 50 kilometres a day, my target if I was to reach the next drinking water before my supplies ran out. As always, though, once I started a section there was no option of turning around. If things got tough I only thought of how far I had to go, not how far it was to backtrack.
It took until Cape Keerweer for my strength to return, it was a great relief that I recovered and my strength didn’t keep dropping out of me. Looking at a map, Cape Keerweer is a feature hardly worth a mention let alone the lofty title of ‘cape’, but in this area it’s relative to the surrounding coast and any variation on ‘flat and featureless’ is worth a title.
There were a few fishermen running around the coast in small boats, some of them travelling fair distances because the roads were still waterlogged, but most were just out camping and fishing. Many didn’t see me but most of those who did made an effort to give me a wide berth. The more remote I got, the more curious people usually became, so the obvious effort to avoid me made me curious. I started wondering why: Perhaps they had exceeded their fishing quota and didn’t want to talk to a stranger? Perhaps they were running drugs? Ultimately I decided the reason they avoided me was they didn’t want to waste time saving the life of an obviously deranged tourist whose idea of a pastime was to be a crocodile’s plaything on a very remote coast. Time was precious as there were fish to be caught.
There were a few exceptions, though. I would see perhaps five runabouts over five days and one would stop only if I was directly in its path. The day I got to Cape Keerweer was one of those days when I scored. A local rancher who was out fishing for the day stopped and handed me a lump of the most wondrous roast beef a human could possibly taste. After days of lentils and food I didn’t have to chew, that beef was one of the most memorable meals of the entire trip. That and the fact my bum had decided to turn off the tap meant the benefits of fresh meat would stay in me for more than a couple of hours. It really was a great piece of cow.
The water was murky throughout this section, and this meant the odd bang on the rudder from little sharks. I also saw a couple of dugongs and a few strange-looking dolphins which were hard for me to identify, so I won’t bother speculating. To complete the picture there were turtles and barramundi along with many other unidentified splashes. One of the more unusual of nature’s events was being in the path of a moth migration from the southwest. The moths were in their thousands and I was soon covered as some lucky ones had a rest, but there were plenty more in the water that were not so lucky. It may be considered a remote and featureless coast by humans but nature seemed to like it here.
I made Pormpuraaw (Edward River on some maps) on 2 May, five days after leaving Weipa. I pulled up among the locals fishing in the shallows of the beach. I was just a couple of kilometres short of the tourist campsite and had landed where the locals camp. It had been abused and looked like a war zone, but it had water and I couldn’t be bothered to move on, so I set up, cooked and was asleep by dark.
Next morning ‘Rob the Ranger’ came round and gave me a lift to the regular campsite. It was definitely a step up from the previous night’s site. It’s hard to imagine what can be done to trash a concrete shelter, but the same shelters were built in both camps and they were hard to recognise as the same design. Rob kindly let me use his office to update my web page, and gave me a quick tour of the town before a visit to the supermarket. I spent the afternoon cooking and resting.
I was sharing the camp with three fishermen from Queensland. They had been out fishing and had a good day, catching 40 barramundi but releasing most and only bringing back a couple to eat. There was a 7-foot-high fence behind their tent, which I didn’t pay much attention to at first, and as they were cleaning their fish a large croc rushed out of the undergrowth at one of the fishermen. Luckily the fence held and the croc bounced back, but that didn’t stop the inevitable outburst of the kind of language you wouldn’t hear in church, mixed with relieved laughter.
I then discovered that the fence was separating the campground from the local crocodile farm. The smell of the fish had stirred up one of the bigger breeding females who was known for her temper. It was about now I took a good hard look at the rather rickety fence and wondered how much longer it would be standing. I couldn’t worry too much about the crocs behind the fence though; it was the one on the opposite riverbank, which formed another boundary of the campground, that was more of a concern. So 20 metres from where I had pitched my tent was the fence of the local croc farm, and 200 metres away was a croc basking, fenceless, in the evening sun.
It turned out that the only real problem I had with the wildlife were the crows making off with three Mars Bars I’d just bought. Boy, was I upset with those crows.
Rob came round later that afternoon to take me t
o the local pub. Pormpuraaw is a dry community so that meant the only alcohol available was at the pub. The police would regularly check vehicles and impose heavy fines on tourists or locals breaking the rules. This ensured the pub was very popular with everybody in town during its opening hours of 4.30 to 8.30 pm. It wasn’t hard to miss the pub but hard to identify it as the local ‘licensed establishment’. It looked more like Checkpoint Charlie. There were high steel fences topped with razor wire, double gates, serving hatches that had metal shutters ready to deploy, and bouncers on the gates and roaming the grounds. I thought that the security levels at the croc farm and the pub could be happily reversed at any other place around the country, but somehow it worked here.
Anyway, after being introduced by Rob, I was allowed to register and enter the pub. Then I got my score card. This had six boxes, each of which represented a beer. I could get one beer at a time, it would be opened for me, my score card stamped, and after I’d had my six there was no more. This was a great system; it destroyed any idea of being in a ‘round’ as you couldn’t buy drinks for others. It would have saved me a fortune when I was growing up if Mrs Thatcher had started it in England, although I think there would have been enough resistance to make the much-detested Poll Tax seem popular in comparison. This simple system did have its limits though. I got a few sideways looks as I asked for ‘A pink gin with a twist of lemon, a packet of cheese and onion crisps, and could I reserve a table for two for dinner? Please.’ I just took my beer and sat down.
All the Way Round Page 20