Suttons Beach to Tangalooma Return - 58 kms

Not what we expected to see parked in the middle of the shipping channel off Moreton Island.  I'm not sure if this was a scheduled visit or if the P&O Pacific Pearl was sheltering from a series of low pressure systems that have been generating some large seas and wild swell off the SE Queensland coast. The end result was a resort overrun with tourists that was similar to the Gold Coast in summer, good for the local resort but not so good for a couple of kayakers seeking some solitude and a camp under a tree before paddling home.

We had hatched a plan to do a longer paddle during this weekend, and with a bit of rescheduling we ended up settling on 2 x 27 km crossings out to Moreton Island and back.  Unfortunately the tides weren't perfect for us with morning and afternoon low tides and a lunch time high tide.  I would aim for a lunch time low tide if I was going to do this crossing again.

We took off at 6:00 am at the bottom of the tide from Suttons Beach, generally aiming at the port side channel markers a bit south of Tangalooma, before crossing over to the starboard side marker on the way to the wrecks, about a kilometer north of resort.  We averaged just over 8 kms/hr for most of the paddle with no wind assistance to talk about until we hit the main shipping channel that runs down the inside of Moreton Island - an outgoing tide would have made crossing the shipping channel a little more comfortable, but our paddling speed only dropped by a km or so per hour as we pushed against the tide.

The wrecks are definitely worth snorkeling around, but with so much traffic and another 30 kms to go, we just paddled around them before heading down to the resort for a quick lunch break with the other 20 million people who decided to visit Tangalooma on this beautiful pre-spring weekend.

As crowds were not what we were looking for, we grabbed a bite to eat and got on the water again to paddle down to Shark Point for a short break before heading home.

Fins on the water?  The sail was up with hope of an afternoon sea breeze popping up to help us home - it came through an hour or so later so I spent the last two hours of the crossing catching runners and hitting up to 19 kms/hr which made for a pleasant end to a long day paddle.

Fin was from the friendly variety - we had lots of these visit on the crossing, popping up in front of the kayaks when we least expected it.

Hoskyn Islands

This is a sea kayakers view of West Hoskyn Island, taken on our sea kayaking trip through the Capricornia Cays in 2010.  There is a closed-reef platform surrounding the island and a beautiful lagoon on the southern side which includes a large reef wall and a number of bommies that are covered in sea-life.  The lagoon includes a very large but shy groper that lives in a rock cave in the reef wall and an over-friendly tawny nurse shark who doesn't mind getting in your face (probably just being overly inquisitive but I am always a bit wary when I am a long way off shore and the shark is bigger than I am :-)

The north side of the island has a large number of small reef sharks that are also very friendly and like playing tag with your paddle so wouldn't pay to dangle too much in the water for too long.

The reef was teaming with sea-life which is great to see island's like these put aside as green zones which can't be fished by our commercial operators, as well as the benefits to our turtles and sea bird populations which use these islands to breed on their yearly migrations.

I had seen this large turtle on the reef platform and was concerned that it may have been dead, but when approached it was alive and well, just stranded on the reef for a tide cycle.

After short break on the island and a snorkel in the lagoon we headed off towards Fitzroy Reef and One-Tree Island on our way to Mast Head Island via Heron Island.

Sea Kayaking around Lady Musgrave Island

One of Queensland's best kept secrets is that you don't have to pay a $100's to $1000's of dollars a night to stay on some of the beautiful coral cays that make up the Great Barrier Reef, you can do it for $5.50 a night (at the time of writing)! You just needs some camping gear and a sense of adventure.

There are a number of ways to travel to this island, via the Spirit of 1770 which visits daily from the Town of 1770, via your own ocean going boat, or if you are a bit more adventurous, via a sea kayak.  In the picture above we are having a break in the lee of the Lady Musgrave Island reef wall after paddling around 40 kms north-west from Lady Elliot Island in 2010 (from L-R; myself, Gary Forrest and Eddie Safarik).

Lady Musgrave Island is an uninhabited island around 60 kms off the Queensland Coast and is the southern most island in the Capricornia Cays National Park; noting that Lady Elliot Island is the furthest most southern island in the Great Barrier Reef.  It is surrounded by a very large lagoon, thanks to a closed-ring platform reef which protects the island from the relentless swell which predominately comes from the SE.  An entrance has been blasted into the surrounding reef wall which provides deep water access and safe anchorage within the protected lagoon.  A safe haven and popular drop in place for Yachts cruising the Queensland Coast. 

The island is predominantly covered with pisonia trees and she-oaks. It hosts a number of migratory birds (noddys, mutton birds, etc) during their respective nesting seasons, as well as visiting loggerhead and green turtles for egg-laying/hatching.  The reefs are teaming with wildlife and you are able to catch fish outside the designated green zone.  The waters of the southern Great Barrier Reef are amazingly clear, making this a fantastic spot for snorkeling and diving.

The Fairfax group of islands are a few kilometers to the north which would be a great day paddle if you had come over by boat and were basing yourself on Lady Musgrave.  Further north is the Hoskyn group of islands which again has a natural lagoon and is inaccessible to larger boats due to a closed-ring platform reef which holds a smaller lagoon with amazing wildlife.

The campsites are on the north west corner of the island and you would be best coming in at half-to-full tide to get over the reef edge saving a longer paddle around to the boat channel to get into the lagoon.  The swell breaking onto the reef wall will be very heavy so it would advisable to cross in the lee of the island if possible.  Surfing across the reef is possible, but dangerous given you can't really see if the waves are sucking dry on to the reef platform from behind and holing your boat or yourself this far off shore is to be avoided ;-)

The other bird life that we came across on each of the coral cays were sea eagles - generally one pair per island.  It would seem that their favourite food is sea snakes, closely followed by young turtles.

Snorkeling around the green zone allowed you to view sea life in a more relaxed state than outside where they seemed a bit more wary of the food chain thing.  There were lots of turtles in the local waters and some reasonable sized reef sharks that would cruise through every now and again.

The camping on the island was fairly basic, but there were toilets and an emergency phone.  These days I carry a single side band shortwave radio for weather scheds whilst I am off shore, but when we did this trip in 2010 we had an afternoon ritual of climbing the tower to get clear reception for the weather broadcast on the VHF radio.

Our trip was during the winter months and there were no bugs, and for most of the camping I slept under a tarp rather than putting up a tent.  Lady Musgrave was the only exception to this after I was visited by a rather large centipede in the middle of the night.  Apparently these must have been introduced with some of the building materials for the toilets as I didn't come across these on any other island.  It has been reported that they can give you a nasty bite and this one decided to try and crawl over my neck before paying the ultimate sacrifice :-o

Be careful of walking off the tracks through the centre of the island as the ground is littered with mutton bird nesting holes.  Also think about where you setup your tent as under the trees will result in guano coated camping gear!  Just one of many fantastic islands off the Queensland Coast which allow remote camping.

Fraser Island - Whale Time

Gary Davie and Jonathan Rihan joined me for a week of paddling on Fraser Island in Whale season with no set agenda or plan other than to paddle up to Sandy Cape on the biggest spring tides of the year and to enjoy the remote north end of this beautiful island, away from the tourist boats whose diesel engine drone would be enough to drive me up to the Whitsundays if I was a Humpback Whale on my yearly migration to the warmer climes.

The trip coincided with the August 2014 full moon which was the closest the moon passed to the earth this year which gave us the opportunity to enjoy some wonderful sunsets and sunrises with only whales, dolphins and the occasional dingo for company.

Fraser Island is a sand island with amazing amounts of fresh water available if you know where to look.  With this in mind we chose to bring along minimal water, with Gary bringing a water filter which allowed us to restock our water supplies whenever we wanted.  This filter did a brilliant job of turning brackish water into clean drinking water.

  We took less meals than we needed on the basis that we would catch some fish along the way and we could make do in the event that our fishing exploits were unsuccessful.  Armed with some frozen worms and some backup dehydrated worms we were lucky enough to catch a couple of meals, though we had to work for it given the amount of commercial fishermen who were netting all the way along the coast up to Sandy Cape!  Yup, was a bit angry about the exploitation that is happening in this beautiful part of the world - not sure if some of the commercial fishing was happening in areas that they weren't supposed to be in as it just wasn't policed adequately - and how is inshore netting sustainable?

We ended up staying at each campsite for two nights which allowed us to relax without the pressure of having to move campsites every day.  To do this we paddled some longer days with 38 kms being the shortest paddle and 50 kms ending up the longest (not to mention the 20 knot headwinds we slogged into on that day!).  We spent the rest days fishing, beach combing and just chillin' whilst watching the Whales and Dolphins pass by.

 Day 1 saw us paddle from Urangan Harbour to Awinya Creek.  There was little whale activity in the lower part of the bay, and most whales sighted would have been swamped with Tourist boats.  The bulk of our Whale sightings were from Awinya Creek northwards with the best interactions being around Rooney Point.

Our first campsite was about 800 meters up from the creek mouth (close to where the 4WD's cross the creek).  We had some sand flies to deal with but apart from that we had fresh water (at low tide) on one side and the beach on the other.

Day 2 was a rest day and cook up day to try and lighten our boats for the paddle up to Sandy Cape.

Day 3 was a 42 km paddle from Awinya Creek, with a directish line to Rooney Point and up to Sandy Cape.  We had a couple of whale encounters on the way to Rooney so our track may have had some diversions in it. We had a mother and calf very interested in us as we headed towards Rooney - the photo's below show them coming up under my kayak for a closer inspection.

The mother took a liking to the Grey Taran.  Initially, she came out of the water vertically about a meter away from the kayak to have a closer inspection.  We moved away a little and then she came up under the kayak again and lifted her fluke less than a meter away from Gary who didn't really hang around to appreciate the close encounter.  I always feel privileged to paddle with these gentle inquisitive giants who seem to be very aware of their size and have never actually touched our kayaks, though have moved within a meter of us.

After this amazing encounter, we paddled around Rooney Point up to Sandy Cape where we were greeted by a couple of large Manta Rays, some sharks and more Dolphins.

Day 4 was a day paddle up to Flinders Sand blow and a visit to the Sandy Cape Lighthouse where we topped up our water supply and got some patchy Telstra 3G reception from the table in front of the lighthouse. The Dolphins kept us entertained chasing fish into the shallows and feeding on them as the whales passed slowly by.  There were a number of bait fish schools which made themselves scarce as the commercial fishermen came through with their nets.

Day 5 had us paddling into a 20+ knot headwind at times on our 50 km paddle back from Sandy Cape to Awinya Creek via the scenic coastal route.  At times, our progress was down under 3 kms/hr with the gusts and against tide.  We had a number of Whale encounters along the way, including a couple which we assume were mating in the waters near Wathamba Creek.  We had been watching a whale coming out of the water and lifting its fluke and pushing another stationary whale around and were concerned that something was wrong with the stationary whale. She was very large and it was not normal behaviour for her to be floating on the surface.  We didn't get too close as we were concerned the other whale that was pushing her around may have been distressed and didn't want to get in the way - but when we paddled over they moved off together looking a little sheepish and perturbed with our interruption.

After another downpour, the wind dropped and swung more easterly and after a short period of calm, we paddled into the evening with the incoming tide down to Awinya where we setup camp in the rain and wind in the dark.

Day 6 was a rest day to dry out our gear and clean out some food for our trip home.  We caught a feed of whiting for lunch and I did some exploring of the swamp lands along Awinya Creek.

Day 7 was the trip back from Awinya Creek to Urangan Harbour via Moon Bank.  We had decided to get back a day early as the weather was closing in and they were predicting a lot of rain and wind for the following day.  We made some good time on the way back with some contrary cross winds and some lumpy seas.  We had a short break on Moon Bank in the lee of the grassy hummock offering us some protection from the wind before we made the next hop into the Harbour and hot showers!

Last time I paddled to Sandy Cape I was in an overloaded skeg boat and was on my way to paddle the 90+km crossing to Lady Elliot Island and up through the Capricornia Cays.  I couldn't help reflecting that paddling these faster touring boats with rudders certainly would have made that trip a lot easier on the body and a lot safer.  Looking forward to the next big trip in 2015!

I have a theory that there is some symbiotic relationship between Humpback Whales and Bottle-Nose Dolphins.  I have seen these dolphins guiding the whales through their local waters both at the top of Fraser Island and at North Stradbroke Island.  I will see if I can dig up any research in this area and will share my findings.  The following link is a quick edit of some of the whale footage and images I captured whilst we were on this trip, and you may notice that Dolphins are photo bombing the whale footage on various occasions.

For those of you who have read my trip reports before, I usually do a what worked well and what turned to crap section.  So, nothing turned to crap and we had no gear failures to talk about but the things that worked really well were:

• Gary's special yogurt recipe (overnight prep so ready for breakfast); and
• Water purifier/filter (Platypus Filter Review).