All the Way Round (25 page)

The Gulf of Carpentaria has diurnal tides. This means instead of the usual two high tides a day, there was only one. Or put another way, the ocean spends twelve hours running out then twelve hours running in. So when I land at high tide I have to launch at low tide, twelve hours later, making it a bit of a lottery as to what I’d be faced with in the morning. Sometimes it would be compact sand for 200 metres to the water, or it could be almost half a kilometre with a mixture of hard and soft sand degenerating into bottomless sticky mud—yum.

I was caught out by the drop in temperature as I left Karumba; it got down to 12°C at night as the cooler months approached. That was quite cool for me; I had been used to lying on top of the sleeping bag and now I was regretting leaving my thermals in Sydney.

Sweers Island is 140 kilometres from Karumba, north of Burketown. Matthew Flinders stopped here in 1802 during his circumnavigation charting the remaining unexplored coastline of Australia. It’s a small island, 8 kilometres long and less than 1 kilometre wide, but it sports the highest point of the southeast region of the gulf with the 29-metre high Inspection Hill. Matthew Flinders records that he climbed this hill to get a look at the surrounding area.

Tucked away in one corner is a long-established fishing resort run by Lyn and Tex Battle. I had emailed Lyn from Cairns and she had agreed to get some supplies in for me. I got to Sweers Island on 15 May. It had a mixture of beaches and rocks along the coast, with vegetation that looked like it kept low to avoid the cyclones. I didn’t know what to expect in such a remote spot but I knew there would be drinking water. I paddled towards a radio antenna, landed on a nearby beach where there were a few buildings and quickly got my best clothes on.

Sweers Island turned out to be an oasis in many ways. Lyn and Tex were very welcoming and put me up for a day of rest while I got myself organised for the next leg across the gulf. They have run the resort since 1987 and have made a paradise for fishermen who fly in from around the country in various small planes or helicopters. Some of their guests had spent days flying from home in helicopters for a couple of weeks fishing the area. I even met a group of American ‘tag-along’ fliers who followed their ‘tour guide’ in borrowed aircraft. They considered aircraft a mode of transport in the same way most people consider cars. They were all interested in my trip and, having seen the coast of this area from the air, had a very good aspect of things. I played on it and got a few beers as a result.

Although it was about as remote a fishing spot as you could possibly get to, it was quite busy and I soon relaxed among the guests fresh in from their day’s fishing. When not entertaining her guests Lyn is also a radio ham, talking to people all around the world using voice or morse code. It was definitely a great place to recharge, and if you are a serious fisherman it’s a place to get serious about fishing.

After being well fed and spending a few lazy afternoons hanging around the bar watching those sunsets, it was a real drag to have to face facts and move on. But Lyn had helped establish that my food had arrived at King Ash Bay and that it would be taken to the islands the next week. That fitted nicely with the distance I had to cover to get there, so my excuses dried up. As I was leaving Lyn presented me with a Sweers Island beanie and one of Tex’s thermals, which I gratefully accepted. Lyn was very interested in the trip and did what she could to help me out. Her encouragement sent me on my way in the right frame of mind.

From Sweers Island I was blessed with a tailwind. It would start around dawn, then pick up until around 9 am then blow 15–20 knots until midday when it would start to die down. I was also lucky with the tides. I’d land when the tide was quite high in the afternoon but, even better, I’d leave in the morning when it was even higher: win–win. So with the wind and tide on my side, things went well.

On one of my stops I had a walk along the beach and found a barramundi fisherman named David Russel and his two young sons living off their boat up a small creek. It turned out that when David was fourteen he had cooked fish and chips for two kayakers on his dad’s barramundi boat. Those kayakers were Paul Caffyn and Shaun Leyland (Shaun had paddled with Paul on this section of his trip), back in 1983. His sons and I represented the next generation of kayakers and barra fishermen who had met in almost the exact same circumstances, although I doubt very much that David’s boys will remember me in 28 years.

I crossed the Queensland and Northern Territory border without ceremony. I couldn’t be bothered working out if I had to move my watch forwards or backwards and, if I did, whether whichever time I chose would mean it would be lighter or darker in the mornings. So I decided to leave time alone until I’d rested my rather limited powers of deduction or I met someone with a watch.

The most outstanding part of this section was the noise at night. There was none. I awoke one night with a start, which usually meant something had triggered my subconscious and being unable to figure out what it was I would wake up. But that night I lay there concentrating, listening for any movement or a call that would have triggered the alert. There was nothing, and that was what woke me—nothing. There was not a single sound; no insects, waves, winds, birds, dingos or splashes. It was the first and last time I can remember where everything in the dead of night was totally silent. It was a little bit spooky but not enough of a concern to stop me falling straight back to sleep once I knew there was nothing to worry about.

After five days I found myself at a deserted fishing camp on the south point of Vanderlin Island, which is one of the Sir Edward Pellew Islands. I managed to score a bit of drinking water from one of the tanks and, after making use of some chairs and a table in the afternoon shade, had a very pleasant night. I could have stayed for days, or at least until I got sprung.

Saturday 21 May I landed at Paradise Bay on North Island of Sir Edward Pellew Islands. This was where Keith Hallett had arranged to rendezvous to pass on my food. I had chosen to paddle between Watson and North Island up a channel that got quite narrow. Well, it felt narrow because the mangrove banks closed in to a very scary 500 metres. This meant no room to manoeuvre should a croc decide to give me some attention. I liked a bit of water to move around in, allowing me the option to choose a direction to run, but here I could only turn around and go back to where I’d come from or keep going. In the end I saw nothing to justify my worries and landed at Paradise Bay to find a shelter with two water tanks, but no food parcels and no boats moored in the harbour. It was a nice place but without my food it was hard to give it its due. I was worried as I only had two days’ worth of the scabby food that I always left until last to eat.

I was in a dilemma. It could take two days to get to the very remote mining site of Bong Bong back on the mainland and then I wasn’t sure what would happen. Where would I get food from? What sort of welcome would I get at Bong Bong? Not all mines are open for people to drop in. Or I could wait another day and hope that the boat with my food would turn up. It sounded like a plan, but with only two days of supplies left, time was not on my side should anything go wrong.

I decided to put my trust in Keith Hallett and his promise to get my food to Paradise Bay by the weekend. I set up camp and settled in for the evening, treating myself to a yummy meal of two-minute noodles and the last few nuts.

Next morning I awoke to see a large ship, the
Kestrel Bay
, moored in the harbour. Boy, was that a welcome sight! I waited until a reasonable hour of the day and paddled over to see if I could attract anyone’s attention. Luckily for me one of the first crew members who spotted me was the cook. There were a few questions asked but the one I liked best was ‘Have you eaten breakfast?’ I didn’t like to admit I’d skipped my morning dried crackers in my haste to catch them. Within twenty minutes I was seated in the ship’s mess, tucking into bacon and eggs and all the trimmings and washing it down with coffee.

After breakfast I had a shower and was invited to the bridge to meet Captain John Russell. He commanded the
Kestrel Bay
, which it turned out was a ship that serviced the prawn trawlers operating in the gulf. The trawlers would offload their catch to the
Kestrel Bay
, where it would be frozen for storage, allowing the trawlers to head back out to sea to continue fishing. The bridge was a collection of everything needed to get a big boat around these waters, so I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was soon making a phone call to Sharon, who I’m sure never really knew where the hell I was calling from. I checked out the currents and tides for Cape Arnhem and Groote Eylandt and, best of all, I made radio contact with Keith, who told me he was on his way and due that afternoon. I was stoked; my precarious situation had been turned around with bells on.

I paddled back to my camp knowing my food was on its way, with a fried breakfast in me and balancing a 5-kilogram box of prawns on my deck. Before I’d made it the 200 metres to shore, the
Kestrel Bay
had headed back out to sea.

Later that day Keith Hallett turned up in his boat, a catamaran that can sleep around ten hardcore fishermen. He had a small fleet of runabouts which the fishermen use to get to their fishing spots, returning at the end of the day to the mother ship for a feed and a bit of storytelling. I had a chat and collected my supplies, left about 4.5 kilograms of prawns for Keith, and headed back to my camp to sort things out.

My situation had changed dramatically over the course of the day. I’d woken up unsure as to where my next meal was coming from, but then found a ship parked by the tent, was able to make a few phone calls, got well fed, had taken delivery of my food parcel and was now preparing to complete the gulf. From my food parcel I selected the food I wanted to take with me, cooked myself a few nice meals and then had to burn what I didn’t need. A shame but there was no way ten fishermen would want a bag of lentils or half a kilo of rice so it went up in flames with all the packaging.

Sitting with a full belly among a pile of food next to two water tanks, I suddenly felt very weary as I realised I was again fully self-sufficient. It would be hard to explain to somebody who, when hungry, just pops over to the fridge or nearest fast-food outlet to satisfy their stomach, how it feels to toil without that luxury. It’s unlikely that those we know are more than a few minutes from a good supply of food and water with little effort or danger to get there. I didn’t regularly go hungry during the trip either, but I am always mindful that even now there are many in this world who face this uncertainty each day.

When I needed to I could make the distance with half my usual ration of food and 4 litres of fresh water a day. To start and end the day hungry was unpleasant, and could not be sustained without a considerable penalty. I would visibly lose weight and it would take considerable willpower to get going each morning and not to cook more than the day’s ration during the evening. Cuts, rashes and bites would take longer to heal and turn septic quickly. I would feel the cold more and would have to concentrate hard to do common tasks safely. Strangely, after the first hour, the actual paddling wasn’t too much of a problem, as long as I could maintain my usual rhythm. If I had to deal with strong winds, currents or rough seas, my lack of reserves and how precarious my situation was getting would become obvious to me. When I got to a place where I could rest and replenish, my exhaustion would be revealed as my mind let go and my physical state looked to recover.

I set off on 23 May with 36 litres of water and jammed as much food as I could into the kayak. I knew I could get water on Groote Eylandt as there was a mining community there, but as usual I was edging on the cautious side so provisioned for the unknown. This made my kayak very heavy. It was well over 200 kilograms before I got in it.

Down on the southwest corner of the gulf I could see Maria Island. It was blowing 25 knots over a current, which was producing steep, unpleasant waves of silty water. With the kayak being heavy it was a wet ride and hard to keep on track as the dirty waves would swing the stern around the moment I wasn’t paying attention. At one point I was trying to encourage the kayak to point back towards the island when a rudder cable broke; this synchronised with the bolt that attaches the boom of the sail falling out and so the boom detached itself.

I swung wildly, side-on to the breaking waves, as I tried to get on top of the situation. First I brought the sail down and strapped it to the deck. It was flapping itself into a frenzy in the wind and I was worried it would get shredded or would become a problem if I got knocked over while sorting the rest of the mess out.

The rudder quickly became a real issue. Without me making any headway the waves were now rolling past me, tossing me up in the air with a splash of spray, and letting me slide back down before gathering to push me up the face again. As they forced themselves by, they had pushed the rudder flat against the stern. This meant I couldn’t pull the line which brings the rudder out of the water and I couldn’t swing the rudder back in line because the cable was broken. There was a lot of pressure against the rudder as each wave passed by and I was worried it could get damaged. In the end I just paddled hard in a circle until I faced the waves, then the water lined the rudder up enough for me to swing it free. I turned around until I was again looking at the distant Maria Island, relieved that nothing else had gone wrong.

It was a rougher day than I would have expected in the bottom left-hand corner of a huge gulf, but the strong winds and an active current combined with very murky water to give it a serious aspect. I had to almost circumnavigate Maria Island in the search of a campsite where I wouldn’t be stranded among rocks at low tide in the morning. I spent the evening fixing what had broken. This was one of the strengths of the equipment I had chosen, that I could fix in the field whatever might break or wear out. It’s not really as much of a consideration for the weekend paddler, but bearing in mind where I was I needed to be able to fix what I had with a basic repair kit.