Fishing

Friday, Russ and Brice got the boat ready and we headed out to give it a run. We weren't really going to catch fish (or not a lot of fish) so were pretty happy to come home with 6 tailor, 1 black and 1 pink snapper. It was my first time trolling for tailor, so I enjoyed that. We were only in a couple of metres of water, circling a small island (big rock?) and each circle caught us a tailor. We brought them home and Russ smoked them for us and Brice. I made a lovely fish pie from the last one Russ caught and smoked earlier in the week.

A Big Pink


We left around 11am and were back around 3, stopped for lunch in a very pretty spot and just had a nice time. I loved seeing Eagle Bluff, Fowler's Camp and a number of other spots we've driven to, from the water this time. It was an overcast day that threatened rain all the way out (and did on the way home) but the water was steel grey and like glass.

Denham and Wind, Wind, Wind

Sunset from Escapade


Russ and neighbour John took the boat out on Wednesday 21st and came home within the hour with 2 pink snapper-must be over 50cm and can only keep one each, and 3 black snapper. We had fish and chips for dinner and I think it was the best snapper I've ever eaten!

Thursday, Russ and I headed out hoping to do it again. The wind blew up and we had to turn tail and go home. It blew non-stop shaking the van and flapping the awning and driving us crazy. Finally it slowed and on Sunday afternoon we managed to get out for three hours. We caught a size black snapper, two big squid and threw back four sharks. If we hadn't got out, we'd have gone stir-crazy. Strong wind is as bad as rain in the end-you can't do anything. We tried to play mini gold Saturday, but it was shut.

Yesterday-Monday-we went out fishing again. I caught two sharks. The largest was about a metre and he and his mate are both flake in the fridge now. Russ caught a size black snapper and a good sized sailor which he is smoking as I write this.

We got back, cleaned our fish, had showers and went out with other neighbours Beatie and Charlie at 5.30pm for a sunset sail on the catamaran Escapade that is moored in town. It was a gorgous calm evening, with not a breath of wind, so we went out under motor. After sunset, we headed back to a mooring some way off the jetty and stopped for a sausage sizzle, drink and beautiful views of the town. We got home from a wonderful evening around 8 and it cost us a tiny $35 a head. Highly recommended by all of us.

Denham Looking Like fairyland from Escapade

Crabs

Yesterday we braved the wind and went out crabbing again from Monkey Mia. We came home with 12 beauties which we divided between ourselevs and neighbours John and Jan (Carmel and Ron got the last ones). We froze the meat from three and are having baked garlic crab tonight (one of my favourite crab dishes).

We had better luck than the three men we met as we launched the boat. They were just coming back after loosing 10 pots and 15 crabs to the fisheries inspectors for crabbing within the recreation zone that surrounds Monkey Mia (800 metre arc with the jetty as its centre apparently). They had to go and video a statemnt to be shown in court as they can't be there. Lucky we met them as we didn't know the rule although we haven't crabbed in that close fortunately.

It amazes me we'd never tried crabbing out there before, but I suspect it goes back to when we were new at it and I wasn't quick enough hauling the pots up. I feel very skilled at it these days and can tell by the weight of the net if I have a crab in there and hardly ever loose one out of the pot as it comes up.

Tonight we are going to the bowling club for a "social roll" with all neighbours around us, tomorrow we are fishing, then having a casserole tea and sunday night it's a roast at the bowling club. I tell you what, this life is all go ;-)

We got a yesterday message from friends Ron and Irene who we met at Molloy (near Augusta) 2 years ago, and they will be in Coral Bay the two weeks we are there. It'll be great to see them again as they are a really nice couple that we had a lot in common with. Ron made me laugh when we first met him and he told me I was very nice for a Victorian!!!!!

Denham

Day 9 in Denham, we were able to get out at Monkey Mia to crab. We've had a couple of days of big wind and rain and haven't been able to do anything, so it was lovely. Denham has had as much rain in 3 months as they'd had in the 3 years previous, so it's looking great.

Fishing for bait, and then crabbing, was slow ( 5 crabs in 3 hours), but just as we decided to head for home with enough crabs for our dinner (crustless crab quiche) we pulled the pots up and caught 6 crabs out of 7 pots (lost one pot to someone running over the line). We caught 3 small sharks in the pots today, and had a dolphin and calf come visit us for a very short while.

Our neighbours Ron, Carmel and Craig were happy to get 6 nice big cooked crabs tonight!

Squid

Yesterday we took the boat out to Monkey Mia in the hope that the wind would be blowing in a different direction to here. It wasn't, so we brought the boat home, ate our lunch and made our curry for dinner with the neighbours that night.

The wind finally dropped, so at 1.30 we put the boat in at the town boat ramp and headed out. It's very over fished, so we never bother to do that, but had a bit of cabin fever so needed to go out somewhere.

We caught a lot of fish-undersized or rubbish, and were pulling a couple in when two big squid turned up to investigate. We've never caught one, but Russ clipped on a jig and we soon had the pair of them in the boat. Dan rang and gave us a run down on cleaning and Russ found ours were huge compared to most that others have been catching lately. We could have caught another two about an hour later, but needed to know we could deal with these two first (and if the neighbours would eat any spares!).

The End of a Pleasant Afternoon


Last night we had curry with our two nearest neighbours-we all brought a dish along to share. It was great. For entree I took a hot crab and artichoke dip that they all went nuts for. They'd all eaten crab, but only fresh picked on bread and butter-never in a recipe. Our neighbours Ron and son Craig are keen bowlers and we are all going up for a roll next week which might be fun.

The night before last, we had a couple from Sale arrive opposite us. They are Rob and Jeannette Howie and he was originally from Warragul, they are dairy farmers and know heaps of people we do (Mike Weisse, Jo Crosby, Ann Adams) and Jeannette bought Rob one of my dad's border collies for his 40th birthday almost 20 years ago!.

Crabbing at Monkey Mia

Russ and I took the boat over to Monkey Mia and did a bit of crabbing today-a first for us actually. The first pot we dragged up came undone and we lost it Grrr, but we managed to catch 8 good sized crabs in the remaining 4. We also caught a gummy shark who is now flake in our freezer and a real toothed but tiny shark. We think there may have been more small sharks around today as we had a lot of bait stolen over the morning.

We were both very excited when a dolphin arrived and spent about half an hour with us right by the boat. She took a couple of fish right from Russ's hand and swam around and under the boat looking at both of us. It was truly amazing.

Northampton to Denham

WA's First Government Railway Station


Thursday and Friday night we stayed in Northampton (about 60ks north of Geraldton). It's a little old town on the highway and boasts some beautiful old churches, pubs, museum, a convent and WA's first government railway station. It has a small main street with a few specialty shops and everyone there seemed so friendly. We stayed in the only park which has just changed hands from the shire to private ownership. It was obviously really run down and the new owners of a week were working non-stop to clean it up. There was an on going battle to stamp out free campers and locals short of water using them in the park.

We drove on to Denham yesterday and arrive here round 2ish. It was lovely to see the country looking so much better after all the recent rain. It's really a huge difference to this time last year when it was so dry and depressing. The big grevillias have massive flower stems on them already, so they (and all the other wild flowers) should be amamzing in a couple of months. We stopped off at Shell Beach on the way in and had our lunch and finally (after two years) got some photos of it. The "beach" is actually millions of tiny clam shells that are washed up there. When it rains, the shells calcify and set as hard as rock-there is a mine further up the beach where they cut out building blocks. Several local buildings are made with them, and the surface of this park is made of loads of loose shells that they bring in each year.



It was nice to pull into the park and be remembered, nice to have an en-suite for the month and lovely to see Ron, Carmel and son Craig (our neighbours last year). We had said as we left last year that we wouldn't be back this year, but Ron reckoned a couple of days ago that we would. Well here we are. I wondered who had died to allow us to have a hotly sought after ensuite and it seems Bluey and Joyce who "always" have this site aren't well enough to come up this year. Apparently though, they'll be back next year (Bluey will be 88 by then!)

We popped up and had a cuppa with Harold and Delys this morning and filled each other in on the last 12 months. They were also suprised to see us back this year. It's the third year in a row for us now, so I guess we can (almost) be considered regulars.