Went out in the Harbour today with my suzuki loving mate Mark. A lures only session from 10am to 4pm in east arm – I did not have much hope. However, we did okay. 4 barra (3 mine) with the largest being 47cm. Got a few catfish, a few small trevelly and Mark caught a thumping flathead.
We decided to book a room in Batchelor and take an extended trip in Litchfield.
We went straight away to the Buley Rockholes. Eddie was very excited and it was a huge amount of effort to keep him from hurting himself. Maggie thought it was the best and was happy jumping and swimming around and playing in the small waterfalls. Clarie did her best to keep up with a broken foot (and was thankful for the footware that I’d bought her).
That night we had a parma and a pint and there was a karakoe night on which made it difficult for me to sleep – but not for the rest of the gang.
The next morning we went to the Walker Creek day area, which was alright but probably not worth a revisit. Eddie had slept the whole way there so it made things awkward and we went to Wangi straight after and he was not in the best spirits, although Maggie was loving it, and we touched both waterfalls.
It was an extended trip back home as we got 45 minutes of sleep into Ed and we all got in the pool when we arrived back.
The next morning we went to the picnic spot and Florence. It was Claire and my favourite and the kids were in good spirits. From there we headed home.
We went down to Cooinda lodge for Claire’s 40th. We decided camping would be too much with Eddie, and we got a (very expensive) small cabin. It was very nice though and perfectly suited to us.
Each afternoon we went for a swim. On the first morning we went to Nourlangie, and on the second we went to Ubirr. We were unsure how Eddie would go on these sort of long bushwalks. Well the “path” part wasn’t his favourite, although with a bag of pretzels in his hand he did not seem to mind. But climbing the rocks was his all time favourite activity – that and “doing what Maggie does”.
Maggie was loving it of course, but it was just amazing to see Eddie keeping up. He would refuse to let anyone help him too much too – holding the hand was okay but not taking him over rocks.
On the way back home we tried and failed to get to Ikomarrya and we ended up at Pine Creek for lunch. There was old fashioned trains there to play on and Eddie was in seventh heaven!
On the top of Ubirr
Maggie and I took Pa to the farm today for his birthday. It was very easy to catch fish in the afternoon session, basically all the juvies around 40cm were going to smash each prawn. We all got one and moved onto trying to get bigger stuff. We didn’t succeed (a few did) and soon Maggie got over it and we went back to the juvie pond. She had an absolute ball, getting fish after fish. All in all she got 6 barra, and was getting really comfortable holding them up by the end of it.
Mike and I went to the vernons again today. First cast I got a massive pike and from there a bunch of smaller trevally. We went exploring for a new spot and got a variety of very small things like trout, cod and bluebones. Then we hit the goldie hole and it really fired – got quite a decent feed.
So all in all it was a good day, the only thing it was lacking was a real “photo fish”.
