This site is generally a site for all of my Australian adventures, but how can I resist writing about one of the best things I have ever done?
Claire and I went to Fiji in August of 2011 and it was fun, as most overseas trips are. The highlight was definitely the Kayak trip we took. They take you into a village, participate in the kava ceremony, it is fun. Then the kayaking down the rapids begins.
The difficulty was perfect, everyone stacked once or twice, very challenging but nothing dangerous. The scenery was amazing, we passed waterfall after waterfall, huge tropical forests on large hills, passing some villages where they lived with a blend of modernity yet still sustenance farming to a reasonable degree.
After the kayaking was done we took a motorized boat the rest of the way, it started pouring rain, but it was a warm rain, and I was loving every minute of it.
This was back in April of 2011 and I lived in Airlie Beach. We had had a particularly heavy wet season, and for the first time ever Peter Faust dam had started to overflow. People were going up there to look at it, sort of a semi-tourist attraction. But word quickly filtered around that all the barra, were getting swept over the top of the dam, rumor had it that if you could get to the bottom you would be in for an epic session.
Up until then I was mostly a dead bait and reef fisherman, I had never caught a barra. So me and my mate Tony decided to head there. Sounded simple, but it was a last minute decision, we only had a few hours, and we forgot a few things. And when we got there we found out that most of it was locked behind barbwire fences. We found a route down that never said “do not trespass” so we figured if we weren’t crossing any restricted areas we would be okay.
We got down there to discover we didn’t bring:
– Suncream
– A landing net, fish grippers, or anything that might make getting barra from a very steep incline easier
– A tape measure
– An esky (we assumed all the fish would be inedible)
We brought the camera and some rods and that was about it.
Tony hooked a barra with his second cast. He got about three before I got my first one. I would be interested to know what people thought about eating it… it is fairly silver, and to me, looks edible.
I got three in total, Tony got about 7.
But the story of the day was the big girl that Tony hooked. He took my pliers and made an indent on his rod, and later measured it to be 137cm. Here is the snap I took, with a normal canon powershot d10 camera (no photoshop or fancy lenses or anything)
Most of the barra had marks on them from the damage they had taken going down the concrete dam. Right at the end of the day, I hooked a horse of my own. I fought it for a while, but it managed to get my line tangled in some trees with a clever jump. Tony climbed the tree to get it untangled, even fell in the water. However the line must have become worn on the wood, and it broke soon afterwards. This (and more) was captured on Tony’s go-pro:
So what happened after that? Well I wanted to go back, but I found out later that you weren’t allowed anywhere there. Security had stopped warning fisherman and started prosecuting them. But the main reason I never went back was because of this: Queensland Rocked By Earthquake
We didn’t think much of it at the time, but we were literally at the bottom of a dam when an earthquake hit.
So I decided to be thankful for what I had, not venture down there again, and just have a memory of a 2 hour barra session that likely won’t be repeated.
Wow. Just wow. Went on a two day two night sailing trip on a yacht called ‘Silent Night’ and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Seriously, if I was to name off the top of my head all the best things I’ve ever done.
So we jumped on board on Friday at 2pm, our group consisted of:
3 canadian blokes, very funny, loved to party
3 english blokes who had just become dentists, loved to party
A couple from Liverpool, great value
A couple from Germany, a tad more conservative, but real nice
A young husband and wife from sweden
Me!
Everyone just got along great from the start. The first day we pulled up in a bay for the night and watched the sunset, everyone having a few beers and getting to know each other. I knew then we were onto a winner.
Then we woke up on Saturday and went for a snorkel for about an hour, saw some cool things, including a large bull-ray that we all named ‘steve’. They dropped us at Whitehaven beach for a few hours, which mostly consisted of us playing frisbee in the water. Not sure if you’ve heard of Whitehaven, but the sand is white, fine silica, and it is probably the best beach in the world. (although it has no waves so I have to veto that)
Had a sunet snorkel before the huge night of Saturday kicked off. Everyone got along great and we were all tearing through the beers. The canadians passed around their contribution to the night, and the deckie broke out his guitar. The skipper told us some stories, like the time a few years ago he woke up to discover an orgy on the boat. We all decided that, if that was to happen, we would all pretend that there was an equal number of girls and guys. The night is something that I am going to fail in my attempt to put into words, but the jokes were hilarious, the tunes were pumping, and towards the end we all starting singing in all the words and sitting under the clear star-filled sky I remember lying back looking up getting semi-philisophical about how lucky we were. I was also afraid to stand since there was a good chance I’d end up in the water.
I had to work Sunday, but we all booked a table for Sunday night (sans the swedes who had to leave) and once we got there we all introduced a drinking game. The canadians taught me ‘fingers’ which is a version of fives-in, and the english did ’21’ which is sort of like begurkin with numbers. I got everyone to do a boat race, with europe vs the rest of the world, and we kicked ass. I was especially proud to see the German nailing them, he claimed not to drink too often, but I find it hard to believe since he comes from the place where steins were born. I then had a personal race against one of the canadians, and since there were a few other boats groups around, we tried to challenge a few, but no one was in the mood of bliss that we were. Very glad I ended up on this trip, not one of their boring ones. After that we all went out to a club, I had to work the next day so I was home by 2am. Anyway, we all swapped contact details, but that was pretty much the end of a week filled with fun and Michael Jackson jokes. I hear, since he’s mostly plastic, that they are going to melt him down into lego blocks so the kids can play with him for a change.
