Two At Sea

Posted December 29, 2022

August 11 – 30, 2022

Australia is a bird-intensive place; so people here have a lot of tolerance for their presence in places like cafes, certain stores (after the birds sneak in), etc. I think Americans are more germ-phobic and apt to shoo birds off. Rich and I, though, enjoy birds and found their antics around the café highly entertaining. Here are the stars of the daily mealtime shows at the café. (Click any photo to enlarge.)

Noisy Miners

Native to Australia, these grey and yellow birds can be assertive about defending their territory and, in some areas, tend to crowd out smaller birds; but the birds around the café all seem to hold their own. I would say of all the birds, these were the most likely to try to steal food while people were still eating it.

Australian Magpies

These are large birds, about the size of crows. Around the café they were merely opportunists, not trying to invade the space of people still eating but waiting for abandoned scraps.

What’s interesting is they can be one of Australia’s most dreaded birds. Why? Because to protect their young, a few become extra aggressive and attack anyone passing too close to their nests. They seem to be especially prone to attacking cyclists but will also go after runners and walkers during what’s called “swooping season.”

When we first arrived in Bundaberg in 2014, we saw people on bicycles wearing the strangest helmets. We could not figure out what sort of strange fashion statement this might be! Soon, we found out they were magpie-repelling helmets, made with cable ties sticking up out of them. Magpies attack from behind, but the hope is they’ll be discouraged by the cable ties and, often, eyes that are painted on the backs of the helmets. From what I read, these measures aren’t all that effective, although the guy in the bottom photo looks as though he wishes he’d used cable ties.

Interestingly, we’d encountered a lot of Australian magpies in New Zealand and never had a problem, or even heard of anyone having problems with them. Certainly we’ve never seen any cyclists wearing a magpie helmet. Something about Australia seems to make wildlife more aggressive, I think. In any case I assume these birds are smart enough not to nest near a busy café.

Australian White Ibis

These strange, prehistoric-looking birds stand approximately 2-feet tall. Ibis are large birds, with long legs. They have white feathers but a black bald head and a long, curved beak.

Our initial encounter with one was during our first visit to Australia. We were sitting in a Pancake House restaurant in the heart of a city on the Gold Coast of Australia. Our booth was next to a large window which looked out onto the sidewalk and street outside. No pedestrians were around, but then this giant weird bird just casually walked by. Taken aback, neither one of us said anything for a few seconds. Then I said, “I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Since that first sighting, we’ve encountered these birds frequently. They especially love hanging out at public fountains and pools. (Better yet if these places attract people to eat their takeout lunches near the fountain.)

They’re mild-mannered birds, but like the other birds, will take advantage of unattended food and can make pests of themselves by rummaging through garbage bins, thus getting the nickname “bin chickens.”

Like the other birds I’ve already mentioned; some people love them while others consider them a pest.

Blue-Faced Honey Eaters

These birds were our favorite performers. They are quite beautiful, somewhat large birds with olive and white feathers and if mature, brilliant blue round their eyes (if immature the color will be more green or yellowish). They would lie in wait for a table to clear of people, and then swoop in, usually 2 or 3 of them.

Unlike the other birds looking for food scraps, these birds wanted milk-based drinks. In the wild they subsist on insects, berries and nectar; so how they developed such a love of milk I can’t imagine. Adult humans generally like to mix their milk with coffee, which is no problem for the birds as they love coffee with milk drinks of all kinds.

Unlike the other birds I’ve mentioned, everyone seems to like these birds. Well, maybe except for the café staff which has to race them to clear the tables of leftover coffee drinks. The birds generally win the race—I think all that coffee gives them extra pep.

Kookaburras

These birds would show up around the café, but not generally looking for scraps. Instead they were probably making a check of their territories. What we love most about them is their laughing call, a sound distinct to Australia (and probably in the soundtrack to every jungle-setting movie ever made). This call is to let other kookaburras know the bird is claiming its territory; so it’s not unusual to hear two birds in a discussion about this! There is something just endlessly amusing about their call—we even have it as a ringtone on our phone.

Butcher Birds

The butcher bird is a rather large bird, black and white in color and similar to Australian magpies. Like other birds, they are food opportunists but we actually saw more of them hanging around cafes at a marina further north, actually sitting on the backs of chairs next to us waiting to see if we might give them a handout. They are loved in Australia for their distinct haunting call, one of those bird songs considered the sound of Australia.

Australian Ravens

Well, there’s the laughing sound of the kookaburra, the morning call of the magpies, and the haunting song of the butcher birds, but we think the real bird call that represents Australia comes from Australian Ravens.

Their call is distinct and a frankly rather pathetic sounding wah wah waaaah. Our first reaction to hearing this a few years ago was to laugh because, well, it’s pretty funny. And to this day we still chuckle when we hear these birds. And we hear them a lot. They are prolific in Australia and if you watch any given Australian movie or TV show, you can almost be certain you will hear them in the background.

Other Bird Characters in the Park

Magpie Larks

Yet another black-and-white pied bird, this one is easily recognizable because it’s on the small side and generally has light eyes. They are mostly found walking around on the grass and are not at all aggressive about snatching food, but then again they’re not very afraid of humans. You can generally count on running across them on any given walk through a park.

Update: Well, it seems they can be aggressive when it comes to defending their nests. We’re now in north Australia and came across this sign:

Note: If I had written this sign, I think I would have added: “Move to another country” as a final alternative. 😂

Willie Wagtails

This pretty little black and white bird’s charm is in the way it frequently wags its tail back and forth. Like the magpie larks, their main interest is in foraging for insects in the lawn, not what’s in your picnic basket. Although I have noticed they seem to like perching on boat rigging; so it must be a good place to scout for flying insects. (Thank you Google and dreams time for the photo as it was difficult for me to get a photo of these birds with their rather constant movement.)

Crested Pigeons

This is another bird that minds its own business, yet doesn’t seem to mind the presence of humans around. They’re fun to spot because of the distinct crest of feathers on their heads.

Parrots!

I have to say Australia has been full of surprises on every visit, and in our 2014/2015 season, the big surprise was realizing this country is full of parrots! Beautiful parrots in many sizes and a riot of colors.

Being American, our experience of parrots had been in zoos or occasionally seeing them as people’s pets. So how wonderful to see flocks of them flying wild and free, and occasionally being friendly enough to hand feed. During our visits here, we’ve seen many types of parrots. But for now I’ll focus on the two species in the park.

Rainbow Lorikeets

First of all, there were the colorful rainbow lorikeets, which actually we were accustomed to seeing in New Caledonia. They are beautiful, colorful birds that tend to travel in flocks. Yet once they get into a tree they are so hard to spot! It seems the more colorful a bird is, the more interest it has remaining hidden by the leafiest areas on top of the tree canopy. Thank you Google for the beautiful public domain photo.

Galahs

Ahhh, our first parrot encounter in Australia was with these beautiful pink and white parrots called galahs. When we excitedly described this bird to an Australian friend, he laughed and explained to us about galahs. It seems they have a reputation for being stupid, and actually calling someone a galah is a way of calling them an idiot or a fool.

Well, it seems there may be fools involved in all this, but it’s not the galahs as they have been proven to be quite intelligent, social birds. It could be that in their earliest interaction with Australian settlers, they were not intimidated by the humans and thus, while the settlers figured they were too stupid to fly away, the galahs were probably just studying the newcomers and laughing among themselves at their strange behavior.

Fig Birds

These lovely birds didn’t hang around the café much, preferring instead the large tree at the top of the ramp to our dock. Every morning they’d be flying all over that tree, chattering excitedly. It was such a treat to make a restroom walk in the morning past all this bird activity. If we were really lucky, we’d get chortling kookaburras, too. Below, a video of the morning bevy of birds.

These birds were so hyper and fast moving it was difficult to get a photo, but I did later get one in a city further north. Not the best photo but it does show the striking red skin around the eyes of a male bird.

Water Birds

I will give special mention to the birds that actually hung out by the water, the little blue heron fishing off the dock and the big white herons fishing near the mangroves. And always, throughout Australia, we enjoy frequent morning visits from the welcome swallows that sit on our lifelines and swoop around our boat.

So this was our bird neighborhood in Gladstone, but it’s a mere smidge of a drop in the bucket compared to all the birds in Australia. Our favorite, the sulfur crested cockatoo, wasn’t in this particular city but we looked forward to seeing them as we made our way north. –Cyndi

December 24, 2022

Well, where to start. I guess with the most dramatic part of our six day passage from Thursday Island to Darwin, Australia.

The day before we left, we saw a low forming near Darwin. On departure day, it was gone (on GFS GRIBs). This tends to happen and most often, it comes back. It seems that the GFS forecast is often more accurate ten days out than it is two days out. And it was about two days out before the low showed up again. It didn’t look to serious and wasn’t even on the GMDSS (Global Marine Distress and Safety System).

It became apparent that we’d have some higher winds and rougher seas for our last day but most of that would be traveling between Melville Island and the Don Peninsula so we didn’t expect bad seas.  Both the wind and seas were forecast to be behind us also making this less severe.

Well, weren’t we wrong (and the forecasts as well). When we finally got in, we were told that we’d just danced with cyclone Ellie. Oh crap!!! It had only been declared a cyclone at about 10PM – when we were just six hours out from Darwin.

It really wasn’t that bad. What had become Ellie was just another complicating factor in a difficult arrival. The tidal range in this part of Oz is about 8 meters or 26 feet. That big tidal range produces a ton of current. I’d studied several posts about how to time and navigate these currents. We were supposed to hit the channel entry about 4 hours before Darwin high tide. That wasn’t in the cards as we got there at almost exactly the wrong time.

There was nowhere to hold up until the “right time” as the wind was now from the north and we could find no likely anchorage to provide any protection from that direction. We decided to start in and see how it went.

At first it wasn’t that bad. We only had about a knot of current against us. Since it was wind and waves against current, it made the seas worse than they’d have otherwise been. Oh well.

An hour later, the current was up to about 3 knots against us. Keep in mind that this is about a 100 mile entry into Darwin. With our five knots through the water turning into 2 knots over ground, we were looking at 50 hours, but hey, the tide wouldn’t be against us for that long – it had to turn around, right? We considered it “waiting at anchor while underway.”

Here’s a map with the “approach” to Darwin…

After about four hours, the current eased, then it worked its way up to 3 knots with us. Yippee! Now, according to some jack ass who wrote a blog post about how to navigate into Darwin, we’d ride the current all the way in! Nope. We looked at the current graphs on our charts and it was easy to see that there was no way that was going to happen.

Sure enough, after a nice, fast ride at up to 8 knots, we were back to “at anchor while underway” and making 2 knots. Oh well, it would ease and then turn around in another 4 hours or so. It did.

During this long ride into Darwin, probably 20 hours or more, we had one squall after another. Winds got as high as 38 knots with sometimes very heavy rain. The worst was on the penultimate leg into the marina with seas and wind on the beam, constant squalls, and massive waves. Some of the squalls brought the heaviest rains I think I’ve ever seen. They were “pull over to the side of the road and wait for them to pass” heavy. If only we could have done that!

Below, a small gallery showing some of the squalls on radar…

And this last one Cyndi took of our chartplotter with her camera. This was at one of the hardest downpours.

We turned downwind for the final leg and that made life better, but the rain got even heavier. At one point, there was a ship coming out of the channel that we could only see on AIS and Radar (amongst the rain clutter). When we passed by it, it was like a ghost ship coming out of the downpour. Spooky.

OK, now the fun stuff. It was 4 AM, we were at the end of a six day passage and completely infected with passage-brain, coming into a strange harbor with no moon (not that it would have shown any light through the heavy clouds anyway), with a complicated entry, nowhere to anchor to wait for daylight or easing conditions. Oh well, “let’s go for it” we psychically said to each other, and we did.

The most difficult part from a boat-handling standpoint was the last entry into the basin where we’d have to wait for an aquatic biosecurity check and a thru-hull treatment that would require us to stay at the dock for 10 hours. Sometimes, places that look small to me on a chart turn out to be quite large. Not this time. It was a tiny basin, with swells coming in, a small spot to tie up to on the pontoon and a very tricky entry in the pitch black. Yea, I guess you’re right, not smart!

Here’s our track (blue line) into the basin. Our autopilot handles almost anything but not this, with wild currents and swells pushing us all over the place. It was clear that the autopilot wasn’t going to cut it as we were being swept towards the reef. I took over and was steering almost lock to lock to try to stay on course.

We didn’t bump the rocks or reef (proof there is an all-powerful entity looking after fools, idiots and Legacy). We got fendered up and tied off for a couple hours sleep before our visit from the divers for our treatment. (It would have been almost four hours sleep, but we deduct the requisite two hours of drinking from that time. Wow, did we need it!)

We were all set to go into the lock  at 10 PM (yep, a lock because of the huge tidal range here) but we were just too out of it, both from lack of sleep and maybe a little from our celebration bottle of Champagne!

[Confession from Cyndi: it wasn’t the celebration champagne from our arrival but the fact that while Rich napped that afternoon while we waited out our 10-hour thru hull treatment, I had some red wine, thinking I’d then get some sleep and be ready at 10pm. As it turned out, I certainly slept, but I underestimated how much, in my tired state, the wine would affect me. Rich was OK to go, but I was not as OK as I needed to be, especially since conditions were rather windy. A catamaran behind us on the quarantine dock went through and had a heck of a time controlling his boat. Frankly, it’s just as well we didn’t go as we may have been going through the lock with him.]

It didn’t seem smart to tackle something we’d never done before in our current state (and we figured we’d used up all our luck just getting in!). We rescheduled for 6 AM. Wow, it was not fun when the alarm went off. Nevertheless, all went well. Here are some pics of us in the lock…

The trip from the lock to our berth was short and easy and the guys from the marina ran around so that they’d be there to catch our lines. Nice people!

Memories from the passage up to the Cyclone

Leaving Thursday Island was mostly uneventful but there was a lot of shipping traffic to dodge. There was no wind and we didn’t expect any for at least four days.

There were squalls every day and lightning every night, all around us but not usually very close. At one point, this squall looked like a waterspout, but I don’t think it was as the sea was flat and there was no wind.

Most of the squalls were windless (until we got close to Darwin, that is). We got a little rain off and on but not much (until we got close to Darwin, that is).

Fuel was an issue. We filled up at Thursday Island and had 87 gallons onboard (330 liters). The trip was to be 730 miles so our normal rate of 10 miles per gallon, we could theoretically motor the whole way. The problem is that my 10 mpg figure was always with a little wind assisting us and there was no wind for the first four days.

The first two days, I ran the engine at 2200 rpm and was going through fuel way too fast. I dropped the throttle back, sometimes 1800 and sometimes 2000 rpm. This helped with fuel consumption but it was still looking touch-and-go.

We finally got a little wind and actually sailed for a few hours, but while there wasn’t usually enough wind to turn off the engine, there was a little wind assistance for motor-sailing which helped our fuel situation a lot. We arrived with 16 gallons to spare.

(While we had 16 gallons onboard, 10 of those were in jugs but, in the final hours of our passage, it was far too rough to get those into the tank without also getting some of the ocean in there as well. Good lesson: get the fuel from the jugs into the tank as soon as conditions are good enough to do it.)

The passage was about six days but to me, it felt like one of our longest and I don’t really know why. I just didn’t seem to be able to keep track of the days or dates and was constantly counting the days on my fingers.

The last day was the hardest, not just because of the storm, but because I get last-day syndrome as we approach a new destination. Usually, it’s just for the final approach, 30 miles or so, but because the final approach to Darwin was over 100 miles, last-day syndrome deprived me of sleep for 20 plus hours.

Oh well, we’re here now. Time to explore, eat out at new restaurants and see new sights. Next up, Indonesia, but we’re not sure when now. We think we might hang out here for a while. We know we’ll be here for at least a month and during that time, we’ll firm up our Indo plans. We could be in Darwin for as long as four or five months.

While Darwin is in the Cyclone zone, the marina we’re in is a registered cyclone haven, so that feels good, but we still don’t want to experience a big one close up and personal.

-Rich

 

December 17, 2022

We’d planned to leave for Indonesia from here at Thursday Island but that plan has changed. It turns out the best course for where we want to go in Indo takes us very close to Darwin, so why not?!

We’re leaving now and it’ll take us about six days to get to Darwin if all goes well. Our track here is updated hourly if you want to check our progress.

-Rich

Posted December 15, 2022

August 11 – 30, 2022

Our favorite spot in “The Oasis” was Flavours Marina, the nearby cafe which overlooked the water and offered both sunny and shady places to sit, a nice option for everyone.

What stood out most was its lawn area scattered with low tables and bean bag chairs, perfect for people with dogs or kids. Aside from the lawn seating, there were tables with umbrellas and bigger tables under a covered area. Then they had this interesting setup with one very long bench seat fronted with several small tables, perfect if one just wanted to sit and enjoy drink. (That is if one doesn’t mind sharing the bench with opportunistic birds who like to perch on the backrest—I’ll be talking more about these in the next post.)

The staff were very nice, the food was good, and then there was the coffee, which was terrific. This was a huge joy for us to find as it had been awhile since we’d had good coffee. French Polynesia, including the Society Islands and New Caledonia, makes some wonderful things to eat and drink, but coffee is not one of them. For reasons I can’t fathom, the French countries in the South Pacific have what must be the worst coffee in the world. Australia, on the other hand, may well have the best.

The café was only open for breakfast and lunch, kind of a shame given its beautiful setting would be perfect for an evening meal or drinks. Maybe someday they’ll extend their hours, but for the time being we were happy to enjoy a few morning and afternoon meals there. Below, a few photos (click on any photo to enlarge).

Our other favorite thing about “The Oasis” were the impressive number and variety of birds! They were all over the park but tended to congregate most around the café, waiting to swoop in and enjoy any unattended leftover food. The staff certainly tried their best to clear the tables quickly, but those birds were fast and cheeky (a down-under expression meaning audacious). And they had little fear of people.

My next post, Part 2, will feature these wonderful birds. –Cyndi

August 11 – 30, 2022
(Posted December 9, 2022)

Soon after we arrived in Gladstone, I began working on a plan for cruising the coast of Queensland as we made our way north. Before arriving here, I’d already learned a few things about area’s the “big-gun” cruising destination: The Whitsunday Islands, located about 250 miles to the north.

It seems the Whitsundays get pretty crowded during their peak season, June through September, when droves of Australian yachties head north to join the regular parade of charter boats that cruise the area. This results in crowded anchorages and marinas, not something we wanted to experience. And we were already hearing that this year’s season had not only been extra crowded but relentlessly breezy due to enhanced trade winds.

In some ways, it made us feel better to hear about this difficult season. We’d planned to arrive in Australia in June, but had that happened we would have been right there in the crowded, windy conditions when we got to the Whitsundays. Getting to Australia later than planned was looking to be one of those situations where an apparent misfortune turns out to be a stroke of luck.

At this point I decided we should take our time heading up that way, hoping that by arriving in the Whitsundays later in the season we’d have better weather and fewer boats. On the downside, we’d also be cruising the rest of the coast later in the season, putting us unnervingly close to cyclone season. For the time being, I decided to focus on immediate issues and save other worries for their appropriate times.

So, the first decision was where to go from Gladstone. I had my trusty Alan Lucas guidebook, Cruising the Coral Coast, an excellent brochure-booklet the Gladstone marina had given us with a good overview of nearby islands, another guidebook called 100 Magic Miles for when we got to the Whitsundays, and an out-of-print book lent to us by a friend for cruising this area of the coast, known as the Curtis Coast. I also had a Fodor’s Travel Guide to make sure we didn’t miss any must-sees on land, and of course The Rectangle of All Knowledge (aka my computer when connected to the internet).

Initially, I had a heck of a time making decisions about where to head first and what to pass by. The closest cruising area off Gladstone was known as the Capricorn group, made up of small islands and reefs.

Everything initially looked tempting, but I ended up taking a pass on these places for various reasons such as these:

1. Lady Musgrave Island: Actually an anchorage south of the Capricorn Group. It’s inside a reef with beautiful blue water, good snorkeling, turtles galore, and to top it off, a very pretty island. What’s not to like about that? Unfortunately for us to go, we’d have to wait for a period of very calm weather not only to motor 60-plus miles southeast, but then to enjoy the rather-exposed reef anchorage. We just couldn’t afford to take the time to do this.

2. Fitzroy Reef: Would it worth going 50-miles out of our way to visit a pretty reef when we’d just visited spectacular reefs in New Caledonia? Maybe if we were visiting other islands nearby, but otherwise no.

3. Heron Island and its resort, on my To-See list, certainly welcomes day trippers who travel over by ferry. But come to find out they do not welcome yachties who arrive on their own boats. Well who needs those poo-poo heads anyway. 🙁

4. North West Island had some shark attacks, including a fatal one on a young park ranger. Scary. Even if we didn’t go in the water, just looking at photos of the island gave me a foreboding feeling.

5. Wistari Reef looked nice but was located between poo-poo-head Heron Island and hungry-shark North West Island. No thanks. I find Aussies have a tendency when, after a shark attack, to believe the shark stays only at that one place where the attack happened! But I’ve seen enough Shark Week to know that sharks can cross oceans; so making their way amid neighboring islands, reefs and bays would not be an issue for them.

There were a few other small islands around this area, but without visiting the bigger draws on the above list, I decided they wouldn’t be worth going to see for themselves. So it was an overall “No” for the Capricorn Islands.

The next cruising area to consider lay about 40 miles to the north: The Keppel Island group, specifically the much-revered Great Keppel Island, considered a must-do by Aussie cruisers.

By the time I’d finally settled on a plan, it looked like Great Keppel Island would be our first stop, but a windy period was forecast soon after we’d arrive there. Could we duck into the nearby Keppel Bay Marina when that happened? Yes, it seems cruisers do this all the time!

I would eventually learn that marinas on the Queensland coast see a rather constant flow of boats migrating north for the winter and south for the summer. While there are islands and anchorages along the way, many of them are quite swell-prone during enhanced wind conditions. It doesn’t do much good to be protected from the prevailing wind if one is uncomfortably rolling around in the swell.

Then of course, there’s always the lure of laundry facilities and re-provisioning in towns and cities along the coast (virtually every marina north of Gladstone has courtesy cars just for this purpose). Alan Lucas calls this “The Coral Coast,” but I think “The Migration Coast” could also be an appropriate name as yachts of all types are consistently on the move here.

During the 2 1/2 weeks we spent pulling ourselves together and figuring out our plan, we felt very much at home in what I came to think of as “The Oasis.” We weren’t actually on an island where our marina was, but it sure felt like one as we had to cross a bridge to get to the adjacent city of Gladstone.

What a striking difference between the nearest area of Gladstone, which felt rather hot, dry, and deserted as most eateries were only open for dinner. Crossing the bridge into the park, however, meant entry into a world of large shady trees, green grass, flowering plants, abundant bird life, and people who were there enjoying themselves with picnics, refreshments at the cafe, dog walking, or watching their kids play in the covered playground.

Aside from occasional shuttle bus trips to the center of the city (much busier and more active than the area of the city closest to the park), we did have occasion to exit the Oasis on foot, walking across the bridge to visit the nearby seafood market or yacht club, or walk further afield to a liquor store or market. We also walked to stores with boating supplies, including one place where Rich had a part made. But every time we returned from these outings, I’d breath a sigh of relief as we crossed the bridge back into the park.

Below, a few photos of our “oasis” (click on any photo to enlarge) . .

And a few photos of the Gladstone Marina, our home sweet home . . .

–Cyndi