Shark and Driving

   

Remembrance Day today.  We had our 1 minute silence at 11:11 am during our schoolwork marathon.

Some men from the fisheries board showed up to see that we weren't fishing the bay bare...apparently some serious fishermen come a bit earlier in the year and stay here for a month, going out in their boats every day, then going home with their big freezers full of 100 kg of fish fillets.  There are fishing limits and these guys come out and weigh the catch and check that no one exceeds their bag limit.  It was a bit bizarre being camped all alone in the middle of nowhere and being visited by the fishery inspectors.

I rang Katie to see how she went with her violin exam and she sounded good.  Only two weeks to go before she comes back.

Because there is no one here and not much to run into, Grant gave all the kids a go at driving the car.  Both Dom and Jo came back excited that they'd done a hill start, with the clutch.  We are very grateful that God organized this car for us to bring on this trip.  It is just right.

Not much left in the way of food today.  I made some oat cakes for lunch.  Well, I think they were oat cakes.  I mixed up some rolled oats, grated apple, cinnamon, flour and golden syrup. Then I fried cakes in the fry pan.  they were ok. Better with more golden syrup on top...

Late this afternoon we went back out to do some more fishing.  We decided to use bits of Dominic's catch from yesterday as bait - it just looked a bit too much like an eel to be appetising.

Grant, Joseph and I stood and watched all the silver fish jumping out of the water in front of us.  One even shot out of the water right at me and I thought for a minute it was going to flop at my feet on the beach, but no such luck.

I dragged in one of the bottom feeders that I caught yesterday, and Grant struggled to rescue our hook from it's mouth, but it wasn't looking good for catching dinner.

The sun went down as we fished and Nadine, Oskar and Dominic played on the beach.  It was lovely.  Grant decided to head back and get the dinner ready, and Joseph had put his rod away and joined playing with the others, when I had a nibble on my line.  Whatever it was decided to eat the whole hook, and I let Nadine, who had come over, try to reel it in.  She almost couldn't turn the handle, so I took it back, but the fish kept on pulling out line and I couldn't reel it in either.  We called over Joseph.  And we sent for Dad.

We thought we might have hooked a turtle, then we wondered if it was another reef shark, and the moon rose and it got darker and darker as we struggled to reel in whatever had the end of my line.

Joseph's arm got sore and we carefully followed the fishing line to the shallows, peering with our torches for a first sight of the fish.  I began to get a bit worried when three dorsal fins came out of the black water!  We landed a shovel nosed shark.  Well sort of.  We couldn't get it out of the water and cut the line and let it swim away.  It certainly beat the shark Grant hooked yesterday.  Girls are in the lead!

 

Joseph reeling in Vicki’s Shark                           

                       

Vicki’s Shovel Nose Ray 

We've had a great time here at Bruboodju Camp (Nine Mile), however it's been very windy, with sand blowing all over everything.  Our van is full of sand, on the floor, in the beds...I just have to ignore it.