Hold on to your seats, this was a bumpy ride! We should have learned by now not to believe what everyone tells you until you see it for yourself. Ben originally wanted to travel to a very remote place called Walcott Inlet... when advised that it would take us 14 hours to drive 200km and that their is similar fishing everywhere else we quickly renegotiated and decided to travel to Port Warrender, north of the Mitchell Falls. Another traveller had advised us that the road in was “not too bad”.
5 hours later we had travelled 100km. The last 8km we had to drive at a crawling pace, so slow that our speedo wasn’t even registering and we didn’t arrive at camp until dark! We could barely see the water in the dark, I was well and truly over it. Our bodies ached and I had every intention of getting out of their asap.
When morning came and I looked outside the camper I was met with a magnificent view or aqua coloured, calm waters. It was beautiful, but not quite enough to let me forget the rough drive from the night before. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay or go! I knew Ben wanted to put the boat in and I was way too grumpy to tackle that road again so we decided to stay put a few days.
A few days become 5. Unfortunately their was very little tidal movement at this time of month so the fishing wasn’t the best. We found a few good Barra holes in the creeks and Ben caught a few salmon.
Here’s a good one for you! Looking forward to some mud crab we took the boat up the creek to put the pots in. Within 5 minutes we turned around to see a croc smashing our pot and taking the bait. He didn’t seem fazed by us. As we continued to flick lures for Barra he continued to stalk us up and down the creek. Yep, you guessed it.... I was slightly freaking out by this point. I was convinced that at any minute this croc would leap into our tiny tinny and drag me into the water. Next thing I lost sight of the croc, I was realing in my lure and just as I got it beside the boat, BANG! A massive splash right beside me, I let out a shriek and thought a croc was going to take my right arm off! My heart racing like never before I finally realised that a Barra had smashed my lure on the surface right beside the boat! I was still panicked, now I was worried about the croc coming and taking my fish! “Get it in the boat, get it in the boat” I was still carrying on to Ben. I think he thought it was quite humorous. Looking back on it we can have a laugh, but I absolutely shit myself that day. Eventually we got the nice 75cn barra in the boat, the croc seemed even more cranky with us than before so we headed for home! Neadless to say, we didn’t catch any mud crab here.
We took a day trip from here to Mitchell Falls, read about it in the next post. It was the first time we travelled the rough track in daylight since we arrived, we were nervous but found it better than expected. With the wind blowing up after 5 days we decided to pack up and head for a hot shower at Drysdale River Station. |
| Walsh Point Campsite - Beautiful view to wake up to! |
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| Finally my fishing ability is back! 72 cm Barra - the one that I thought was a croc! |
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