It was so good to wake up and know we didn’t have to pack up, or even think about that for a few days.
Our first priority for the day was to find out how Ethan had got on with all his operations. He was due to have his tonsils and adenoids out, and grommets put in his ears this morning Adelaide time, poor kid.
We got onto Carly at around 9am (10:30 Adelaide) and were pleased to find out he was out of recovery and back in the ward, and everything went well.
My plan for the day was all around the high tide here and a spot of fishing. The locals tell me that the best fishing is 2 hours before high tide and 1 hour after. With a high tide of 6.66m and a low of 0.64m combined with a shallow coastline they weren’t joking! J At low tide the waterfront is 100’s of meters out to sea. Deb’s plan was to sit back and relax with a book.
I got down to the beach around 10:30, ready for the Noon high tide. In the space of 1½ hrs I had to move around 25m up the beach
to keep my gear dry. I was getting a few bites, more than those around me but couldn’t hook up onto anything. I saw a few small sharks hauled in onto the beach (up to 1m long) and then I caught my first fish in WA, a small Blue Threadfin Salmon, (also know as Fourfinger or Bluenose Threadfin). Right on hightide I got my first keeper, a 30cm+ Blue Threadfin. I was a happy boy. 🙂 Not long after that I ran out of bait, so I gutted and scaled it, and headed back to the van for lunch. Yep, Blue Threadfin was on the menu. I filleted it, very poorly (I must get more practice at that, … more fishing 🙂 ) and fried it up in olive oil and butter for our lunch, it was beautiful and sweet. After lunch I went back to the beach
armed with more bait. Almost everyone had gone, it was about 12:40pm and there was still a good 30 mins fishing to be had. So I threw my line in and had fun getting lots of bites and hauled in a couple of small ones.
A short time after I got back we went up and rang Carly again to get an update on Ethan, and were able to speak to him, although he wasn’t all that talkative, which was understandable. None the less, he sounded much better than we had both expected and Carly was a very relieved mum, her little boy had got through everything safely and very bravely.
We spent the afternoon reading and then went for a walk down at the beach. The tide was about half way out and the water line had receded about 300m from the high tide mark. We walked out towards the receding waterline looking for shells to bring home for
the little ones. It was amazing how many shells there were, and they seemed to be in bands parallel to the coast at 25m intervals, unusual, but it made shell collecting easy. We got back to the van and gave the shells a rinse and dried them off ready to be taken away with us.
As we were sitting down to dinner, Deb looked out the van window and the sky to the west was alight with reds, pinks and orange colours. It was an amazing sight, and nothing you can ever capture truly in a picture. We sat and watched the skyline change colour as we sipped a wine with our steak. Everything we had heard about this place was proving to be true, it really is a paradise in the middle of nowhere.
It is easy to see why people might come here for a few days and stay for weeks or months.
Another “hard day at the office” awaits tomorrow. 🙂
Tuesday 2 August 2011, 80 Mile Beach fishing was an hour later in the day and we finished our watching an amazing sun set sitting on the beach. What more can I say. 🙂
Today was very similar to yesterday,
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