Sunday, 17 June 2012

Great Keppel and North Keppel

A few more days on Great Keppel enabled further exploration. Captain was excited by the resident artists’ directions.







Apparently, in the age of sail, goats were left on many of the islands as food for the victims of shipwreck. Always eager to make new friends, Matey was excited to meet some remnant feral kids, who only bounded away when she was almost touching them. Inappropriate as they may be for the environment, they were cute. Captain’s kid curry jokes also were deemed to be inappropriate.



We explored the northern part of the island – including walks to the old homestead (formerly a sheep farm) Butterfish Beach and Wreck Beach. At some point coconut palms have also been planted for wrecked sailors so we made sure the bounty didn’t all go to waste.





Then to North Keppel Island, only about two hours’ sail away - perfect!
















 By good fortune, as we were starting the walk to Mazie’s Beach, we encountered a group visiting the education centre on the island including one of the indigenous owners who was happy to chat with us and told us about a good snorkeling spot. ‘No need to go to Cairns’, he said, ‘It’s better here and no crowds’. We wished we could have spoken to him for longer as he was so knowledgeable about plants. We were struck once again by the warmth of people we’ve met.
 

















Monday, 11 June 2012

Great Keppel and Rosslyn Bay

During the last week we spent a few days at beautiful Great Keppel Island (the TV advertisements last century actually didn’t lie) and then, in expectation of inclement weather and having run out of fruit and vegetables, we went to Rosslyn Bay (near Yeppoon) to restock.

Rosslyn Bay was a surprise — we discovered a superbly situated marina beside the remains of a 60 million year-old volcano. Sadly though, this was quarried about 40 years ago to build the original marina (which was then severely damaged in rough weather, apparently), so there is now a very large scar between the mounds. Hard to believe, but this is Queensland and that was probably the era of Joh. Hmmm — back to the future ...
(For sailors/boaties — the marina’s in a hard-to-beat location but we got the sense that they didn’t much like ‘liveabords’, though our dosh was quite acceptable, e.g., if we must have bicycles they needed to be kept out-of-sight. Also, we were moored in a monohull berth as TC is narrow enough to fit these yet we were charged the more expensive multihull rate — we're still trying to follow the logic there. Having said that, we were able to borrow a ‘courtesy car’ for two hours, which was great.)

Being ‘in port’ is always a busy time, with 'provisioning', washing, cleaning and other odd and exciting jobs needing to be done as fast as possible so we can get back to where we’d rather be. We did take the time, though, to walk to the top of a section of the volcano, which was definitely worthwhile. Today we returned to Great Keppel Island, as further exploration was required.

Great Keppel Island





Crab art






At Rosslyn Bay
Fanned rock formation
 Views from volcano





Leaving Rosslyn Bay


Back at Great Keppel