Lined up and ready to go, our island destination in the background.

At 5:30am on fri we lined up on saphire beach ready for a hectic shore break launch and a bit of a paddle. All of us got out through the surf without too much drama. We got out past the saphire reefs, dropped our trolling lines and set off for an island that was far closer to other islands than the name would suggest!!  On the way out dad had a sizeable fish take his BIG (25ishcm) lure and it went for a run or two before rejecting the lure as nutritionally useless and leaving dad with his lure but no fish. As we paddled around the sanctuary zone on the western side of the island, I caught the obligatory bonito for the trip, and so with runs on board and the threat of more with the addition of dead calm conditions it was looking up for the rest of the morning!! We all know something had to happen cause it just doesn’t come that easy (for some of us anyway).

Almost exactly at the time we reached “split” the wind picked up from the NW effectively pinning us to a small zone on the lee side of the island to fish. This was not great as the majority of the lee side was sanctuary zone and the main marks we had were actually 1km east of the island. We persisted in the wind as we’d made a big trip out there we may as well make the most of it. If anyone want the marks, I’m happy part with the lat and longs of the healthiest population of red rock cod on the east coast, possibly all of australia. We had no trouble swiftly and efficiently having the tails of our plastics removed within the first few casts of replacing them and if you were lucky you might even catch a RRC or 7 while your at it!!! I got over that and decided to throw a metal into the wash and got several nice hits from leaping tailor and then caught a RRC on the halco twister!!! :bb: oh well back to the plastic but still in the wash and I finally pulled out a “sport fish”! A small silver trevor.

After this we got over the one spot so dad decided to troll around the whole island and I decided to paddle around and drift along the northern side of the island. I was flicking plastics into the wash and had a couple of hits then bang, a proper take and a little run. I thought probably a tailor cause it came to the boat easy as but as soon as it got to the boat I determined it was a kingy and he determined I wasn’t friendly and took off. After a few nice runs and a good, unusually clean fight I had him to the boat. Only small (50cm) but more fun than RRC!! I could be mean at this point and mention that Juz was only able to get 1 fish, a RRC, to the kayak all day but I won’t be that mean……….. I WILL still mention it, but I’ll also add that JUZ, at the same time I got that kingy, hooked up TWO of them!! :ll: The first one took his plastic on his bream rod and 1000 size reel!!! Whilst fighting that fish, he also hooked up on his hard body that was still out the back! To Juz’s credit, he kept the kingy on the bream rod for quite a while before the inevitable “oh no” was heard in the back ground as I fought my fish. By that time the other fish had shredded the trolling rod’s leader around the reef, so it was a double “oh no” for Juz!!

50cm rat king is 1000% more fun than RRC.

After a couple more drifts past the wash, a few follows and some extra gear adopted by the reef, Juz decided to work his way in and back home. Dad and I decided at that point to head out toward this mark that I had about 900m east. The wind dropped down and the conditions were perfect, although i was unsure whether this mark would turn ok. Turned out a top mark, a very large area of peaks and gutters coming up to about 10ft and down to 70ft. There was plenty of bait schools and it didn’t take long to bring a fish to the yak, only it was a RRC!! :sad1: There was a few more of them and some more plastic tails bitten off so we headed back towards the island. On the way back I had a very large mouth engulf my lure and the tail attached to that mouth decided to propel that mouth as far away from my kayak as possible. I couldn’t even get the rod out of the holder for the first run and when I finally got it out i’d lost a fair bit of line. I began playing the fish. He had several runs, head shaking and peeling off line as I chased with the hobie. I finally got closer to the fish till I ended up a bit too straight up and down on the fish. He had started to come up when……nothing…. he was gone. I still had the lure, he’d just thrown the hooks :doubt: . I was spewing. Exactly the same thing had happened to me with that lure on my last trip off sawtell. I think it’s time to replace the trebles!!! With that i’d kinda decided that this trip was over with no fish to show for the trip and a long 4km paddle home. On my way back I dropped into the island and got another rat king before continuing home. When I was about 1km from shore i started trying to contact dad on the radio as I could see him. The radios were breaking up a bit and worked out dad was down the beach a bit but I was trying to work out exactly where he was when my trolling rod jumped into life again. A quick look at the sounder showed that I was over a very boring bottom, flat, 35ft deep and sandy. I immediately thought a bigger bonito may be responsible or maybe a tuna or salmon but it was fighting down the bottom and had a lot of head shakes. After about 7 or 8 mins he came up to the boat and i saw that glimpse of red. “oh no a giant red rock cod!!!!” ….just kidding… It was a very nice snapper just to save a trip at the last minute. I estimated about 4kg but when I got home it measured closer to 5 at 4.9kg. A very happy end to a long day.

Benchtop size 4.9kg snapper ready for the table.

The beach landing was very hectic with a very fierce shore break which I only just managed to avoid. Dad ended up hurting his knee in the shorey when the wave pushed his kayak into his leg after getting out! I don’t have any in situ pics of the snapper so Juz or dad might be able to put one up. Stephen

Ok so here it is.  The infamous (read: a couple of people may have heard about it!) misadventure of the bobo!!! It took a while to get this report done as i’m waiting for some other pics (which i’ll get later) and also as the full story was only revealed once we went back to get the kayaks to see what went wrong!!

The basic story is that we were doing a creek that we haven’t done before (bobo gorge section) and so it took a while to get the car to the take out. We had to walk a couple of kms down to the river to see exactly where the take out was. We placed a bright pink towel on the river to signal the track and then headed to the put in.   We didn’t really get onto the river till about 10:30-11am and from the moment we got on I just had this feeling that I wanted to get to the bottom and go home.   I was worried about getting home late to Mel (who I had told we would be home before dark!).  But with the whole river ahead of us there was also a heap of anticipation for running a VERY hyped creek that’s been on my list since before I even started kayaking!!  The level was JUST above the min level for running the creek (.5m at frog hollow, which I would now argue is too low to be worth paddling!!).  There were a lot of rapids that were easy read and run and some fun rapids from the beginning but then there started to be a heap of rapids that were not big OR fun looking but we had to scrape down or portage because they were too rocky and/or dangerous.  Most of these rapids would be more runnable with more water but NOT that much more fun as there were a lot of straight forward rock bolder rapids.

Tom on one of the less rocky rapids.

The highlight, definitely, of the trip was a nice 25ish footer that was relatively straight forward and a nice aerated deep landing, which we all ran.

Kyle with a great line over the 25footer. He almost didn't get wet at the bottom!!

A highlight in a day of mediocrity.

As it got later and later we eventually got to a waterfall portage that corky had said was 2/3 of the way through the trip.  It was 5ish when we got there so we were hoping that the end was closer than a 1/3 away!!!  Fortunately it was!!  A bit before 6 we hit the junction with the Little nymboida river.

Sketchy portage around a sketchy waterfall!

This is where the maps show the track is about 500-1000m UPSTREAM of the junction. We had also been told by someone that it was just a quick paddle up the river to the take out. As we pushed up river we never came to anywhere that even looked similar to where we put the towel and no sign of it anywhere.

This is the point I realised my paddle was NOT in my boat and had to go back downstream about 200m to get it.

We kept pushing as it got darker and darker whilst constantly referencing the maps I had photographed on my camera, we were starting to get concerned about what was going on.  Either we had missed the track, overestimated how far we were traveling or the map wasn’t right (we had kinda dismissed this option as i’d referenced several maps including topo maps)!!

After traveling upstream in the dark for over half an hour we got to a larger waterfall that made us CERTAIN the track was NOT further upstream!!!  How could we have missed the track??? We had the towel signal out there and Tom and I both memorized what the surrounds looked like at the take out???

This is actually a picture of the waterfall!! I think!

This is essentially the same picture as above except with more generous lighting!!

We decided at this point to stash the boats and just try and make it out so we could get home (I was particularly worried about Mel not knowing what was happening and her having 6 week old James at home to look after!!)

We kept our paddles as walking sticks and some safety gear and dry bags. We left the boats at 8pm and walked downstream for a bit to make sure we had not gone past the track in the dark.  After this we decided to try and find the road up on the ridge of the valley so we then headed up hill, and by up i mean UP!!! VERY steep rainforest in pitch black. Interestingly there were luminescent fungi everywhere. Glowing blobs across the rainforest floor. It was kinda trippy (and we hadn’t even eaten any!!)

This was our impromptu torch for tom and kyle. Worked quite well. Couldn't have done what we did without it.

It took forever to climb as it was thick undergrowth and after a long day it was a strenuous task with ‘wait a whiles’ and other vines and spikey things everywhere!! At about 11:30pm and reaching a flat spot, in which it became really hard to navigate with no stars or moon to see and no slope to determine which way was up hill, and our impromptu camera torch batteries dead, we decided that we were going to have to stay the night (a very distressing thought of what Mels’ night would be like flashed constantly through my head!).

I had some dry matches with me and so we attempted to make a fire (A VERY hard thing to do in a rainforest!!!) You could actually squeeze water out of the leaf litter on the ground so finding dry kindling was hard work. We tried dryish leaves a few times but it didn’t work. The matches were old and only about 1/4 of them actually lit properly!! Once getting down to the last few matches I decided for a different tactic. I hunted around and found a few bunches of ‘old mans beard’ (lichen stuff that hangs from trees) which worked well but would go out once the match went out. Finally we were down to the LAST match!!!  (I know, it’s like a movie.  If this was on tv it would go to an ad just as I struck the last match!!  ”LOST- the bobo saga! will be back after these words from our sponsors!!”) I searched around for every bit of old mans beard i could find. I struck the match and it lit, I then lit the match box, which then burnt long enough to get the kindling lit properly and we franticly tended to the fires every need for the next hour, slowly building it into a nice size fire. I also had a folding prune saw in which we were able to cut larger wood which was priceless as we were able to stoke the fire up with logs to keep it going while we slept around it. It only required the odd replenishing every couple of hours.

For me it wasn’t that big a deal staying out overnight. i knew we were not in danger, but the night WAS TERRIBLE knowing that my wife was at home with a 6 week old baby having no idea what has happened  . I kept imagining what she’d be doing. How she’d be coping. Who she’s contacting. etc..

It was a mild night considering how cold it can get up there but i’m sure glad we had the fire otherwise it would have been a very long night. I ended up sleeping about 3 lots of 1.5 hours, which I thought was pretty good for sleeping on the rainforest floor with a dry bag for a pillow, only wearing our river gear (polypro top, spraytop, shorts, pfd, kayak deck and helmet and booties(all worn for entire time out) (‘mmmmmm 30 hour wet bootie feet!!’)

Once the morning came we ate some of our food whilst warming ourselves by the fire. We were undecided whether to keep heading for the road or head back down to the river where we could try and find the original take out as well as being in a place that people would look for us if they were. We decided to head for the river. We were sure we would be able to get to the car either way ourselves but at the time my main priority was that Mel know we were safe as soon as possible. This meant that if the search chopper came, I wanted to be seen!! As a last minute thought I suggested we throw a heap of greenery on the fire to pump a heap of smoke out just in case there’s someone looking. Literally 5 mins after doing so a helicopter flew straight over our heads!!! There’s absolutely no reason for a helicopter to be out there, in the middle of nowhere, on the easter weekend, other than to be searching for missing kayakers!!! I rushed with a space blanket (shiny, silver blanket) to a nearby clearing and the boys kept the smoke coming. It came so close we saw the westpac sign on the side and saw people inside!! But it seemed they did not see the smoke or us!! It kept flying around in circles working down to the river. We decided to pump the smoke out with a heap of leaves and then make the dash back to the river.

We’d only gone about 500m when the chopper started back up the hill. Tom rushed back to the clearing with the blanket but the chopper flew straight over and pretty fast. We figured at that speed it was leaving for coffs to refuel. We decided to make the dash down to the river and head downstream to try and find the track or get to the juntion (which is a large, clear, flat spot) and if the chopper came back it would see us. Otherwise we’d get ourselves out. The walk down was WAY easier than up, due both to the prevailing pull of gravity downwards as well as being able to see!!!. We got to the river and headed downstream. We walked about two kms downstream before hearing the helicopter again. Tom rushed out onto a clearing above one of the rapids in the middle of the river. The chopper flew around the corner heading straight for Tom and the shiny space blanket. Immediately they saw us and pulled up like a jockey pulling at the reins of a horse. They took a good look at us (i’d say counting heads), took some photos (I’d say for posterity sake, or maybe we just looked that interesting) then they went up and flew around in circles higher and higher around our spot (we found out later that this was to get high enough out of the valley to radio base and to burn off a heap of fuel as they had just refueled and won’t do winching with full tanks if they can help it). After about 15mins they got closer and closer and eventually (with much protesting by the nearby trees) they hovered right down and winched two paramedics down to the river bed. After some quick checking to make sure we were alright, kyle was chosen to go first with the crewman while we would wait with the paramedic while they flew them to Dorrigo. During this time we had a good chat to the medic and stashed our paddles and other gear we couldn’t take with us (this now meant our paddles were about 3km from our boats when we went to rescue them!!!!).

Tom and I were then winched up (I’m sure if I was injured and it was a more dangerous situation it would be different, but I can’t say that it wasn’t an interesting experience getting winched out of a river in a helicopter!!  ) once the chopper returned and we were off to dorrigo. We got a great view of some rivers we’ve done before and some we’d like to do as well as seeing the rescue heli crew doing their thing 1st hand!!!

The rest of the day gets a lot more mundane!! We got winched out at about 11am. It took us about 3 hours to finally get home after reaching dorrigo in the chopper. The local SES brang pies and drinks for the heli crew as well as us. We took some pics with the crew and chopper. We then went to SES base and waited for police to sign off the case and for SES to retrieve one of our cars so we could drive home.

It was great to see that Mel did exactly what she should have. She told the police the exact details or our trip (which I leave for her every time I go paddling) and when we were expected home. They then went and found our cars at 2am in the morning to confirm that we hadn’t made it off the river. They talked to my boss to ask whether i was the sort of person that would deliberately stay out all night to drink or take drugs etc, and I’m happy to say they said “no way”!! So after ensuring we were in fact missing they readied the chopper for the morning by which time my parents had driven up to coffs from forster and everyone’s family was informed and now extremely worried!!  I’m sure that this whole ordeal was FAR worse for those at home than for us three who actually slept out overnight!! All i ended up with was wet pruney feet from being in booties for over 24 hours (which I also pulled a MASSIVE leach out of), scratches from climbing through the bush in the dark, and I stopped counting the tiny ticks burrowed into my skin when I got to 80!!!

Now, What happened???
After talking to a few people who have done that creek several times, the take out is actually a few hundred metres DOWNSTREAM of the juntion with the little nymboida!!! This contradicts what the topo maps say and would only be confirmed once we got up to get our boats.

This, we finally did but not till our boats had been left in the bush for 3 weeks!  I’m glad no-one goes there often!!!

The salvage trip was almost as much of an adventure as the paddling trip.  We drove right down to the river on a very overgrown road (read: windy, steep, slippery walking track).

The track that would later exact it's revenge on the pajero.

We had armed ourselves with GPS locaters and a sat phone this time (it would look VERY bad form getting winched out of the same place twice in one month!!).  Once geared up with our river gear and a couple of inflatable riverboards, we headed up the river to see how far we’d gone wrong!!

Paddling upstream on the riverboards.

Well after 500m we confirmed that the maps were indeed wrong and that the take out was DOWNSTREAM of the bobo/little nymboida junction!!! Only 15mins in and the world was starting to make more sense already!!

After another 800mish we reached the point where we got winched out and where half our gear was stashed.  Ok, at least some of our stuff was still there and we know where we are and where our boats are. Just how far away are they?  (hard to tell exactly in the dark).

Our gear exactly where we left it.

Proof that the papers are all wrong!! "they had no food or supplies". Then why do I still have food left after 3 weeks!!! The nutrigrain was still good too, had some this day and then for breakfast the day after!

We kept on paddling/swimming/hiking/climbing/scrambling upstream.  Tom and I uttered the words “I think we’re getting close” pretty much at every rapid, which i’m sure was tiring for Chloe and Matt who were on the trip but weren’t on the first adventure!!

Paddling a riverboard with our newly found paddles.

Eventually we reached the waterfall and could see our boats looking snug high on the bank.  Woohoo!! I have a kayak again!!!

kayaks, after a long sleep.

After some scouting around the waterfall and determining it was unrunnable we set off back to the the take out (This time we knew EXACTLY where it was!!).

We had some more adventure when we got back to the car.  With a wet and slippery steep road we had quite a time getting the car back out.  After several attempts we were able to get through but for a little while we were thinking it’s all happening again!!

At last!! Leaving the river with kayaks again on our roof! It's not nice leaving a river without them!!

It will be interesting to see how the spot 2 messenger goes.  It would have made this whole ordeal a lot less stressful for those at home and we could have just stayed out overnight and got out in the morning without all the trekking to try and get out at night as well as not calling the cavalry in for a rescue!!

Cheers again to all involved in the search and to all those who were concerned at the time.

Stephen

P.S If anyone has seen Tom’s pink towel he misses it dearly!!  It’s bright pink, has “TOM” embroided onto it and it may look like this artists impression below!!

Artists impression only. Actual towel may vary!!

New years day is one of the few days we are garuanteed to have off, so I took the opportunity to organise a trip with a few guides and friends. Ended up with 6 of us and we decided to do a trip that Tom and I did earlier in 2009, down Sandys creek into the Little Murray to Deervale rd. Tom and I had hoped it would be slightly higher than when we did it as we spent most of the day quoting that ever so often, paddling trip uttered phrase “If only there was 1′ more water!”. It turned out that our trip down Sandys creek was probably a first descent. Not an epic, but I’m willing to chalk that up as our first first descent! And now I’m chalking up our first second descent!!

Tom, Chloe, Dis and I headed up the mountain. We took a while getting breakfast at Dorrigo as the place was swarming with Crime Scene Investigation cops after a serious incident the previous night (new years eve)!! The entire main street was blocked off and there were guys in overalls and shoe covers walking around taking pictures and measuring stuff as well as yelling at the locals that were completely ignoring the signs telling them the footpath was closed!! After meeting two more of Tom’s friends and getting some breakfast, and watching some entertaining breakfast making at ‘juan’s cafe’, we set off for Sandys creek.

It was hard to tell at the take out but it looked like it was the same or less water than our trip in 2009. Oh well, it’ll still be fun!! (and it was!) Up to the put in and we were off and ready. After some fence climbing, scrambling down banks, around trees and some seal launching we were all in the creek keen to get paddling!!

Everyone found there own way in. As always Tom found a spot to seal launch!!

Sandys creek was interesting for me as we’d forgotten most of the creek other than the 18ft waterfall (quite a memorable rapid on a grade II creek!!). On our first descent a farmer we talked to had actually warned us not to go on the creek cause of this 18ft waterfall! It only served to get us more keen to try this creek so we asked if it was possible to get around it and whether the pool was deep and everything ticked the right boxes so we went for it. After scratching some plastic of all of our boats for about 1km we reached the falls, which we had named ‘platypus plunge’ after there was a platypus in the pool when we ran it on our first trip.

The whole crew cruising upper Sandys!

We came across some trees in annoying places.

After scouting the falls we confirmed that it was probably slightly lower than our first trip which meant we had to do the same seal launch off the bar on the left of the falls. The entry is very straight but at low levels there is a shallow scrapy section which could turn you into a little undercut ledge that looks a bit hurty, so the call was made and I set up on the rock. On the first trip this was the biggest waterfall I’d ever run and for a few people on this trip it was also the biggest that they’d run. The great thing about the drop is it sort of does most of the work for you. You slide in off the rock and it’s just a nice drop until the rooster tail automatically boofs you out into the pool. Everyone who ran had a great run and kyle even went back for another drop.

Seal slide off platypus plunge.

Straighten up a prepare to be boofed.

Kyle on his way down.

Dis sliding down his biggest drop!!

Chloe sets off down the plunge. Also her first waterfall!!

Almost felt crowded with this many. Last time it was just Tom and I.

From here it’s about 1km till we entered the Little Murray and the major portage of the day. This is a huge chasm drop of about 85ft. The portage is across part of the chasm on an elevated foot walk next to a pipe running from the weir above the falls. Then following the pipe down the ridge and back to the water.

Tom, Chloe and Dis on there way below platypus plunge.

Chloe walking the paddles across the walk way. Don't look down!!

The signs of a hard portage. (on the boats that is!!!).Dis left this Liquid Logic plastic all over the place. If we ever have to find Dis lost on a trip we'll be able to just follow the blue trail of gouged plastic!!

The rest of this trip is mostly read and run grade III rapids which were great fun with a big group, watching all the different lines with differing successes and the occasional swim!!

Tom at the top of the mini chute!

Read and run amongst the scenery.

The trip is capped off with a nice grade IV rapid about 1km before the finish. It’s a nice drop and slide rapid but with a bit of an undercut and boulder on the right side to be avoided. On the first trip Tom and I decided not to run this rapid but this time we were pretty keen. Tom ran first followed by Kyle and I. All had a good run, with Kyle even putting in a reverse entry down the slide and into the pool!

Tom leading the way on the dropandslide!

Tom over the drop getting ready to slide!

Kyle on his reverse manouvre down the drop and slide.

Me entering a bit far right on the dropandslide.

Already trying to back away from the boulder on the right of the coming slide.

We then continued down the last km with a couple of grade II-III rapids and a couple of longer pools an we reached the bridge.

Dis rescuing his paddle.

I was again impressed with this run. Perfect run that doesn’t stretch your whole day, easy shuttle, and a great continuous standard with easy portages for anyone not wanting to run some of the bigger rapids. I’ll definitely get back on this section when there’s some more water as I think it’ll be even more fun!!

The salto basking in the sun after another trip!

Just a short report for the moment with some pics.  I’ll explain bit more later.

Went up for a quick look at Rosewood creek canyon.  The creek runs off Dorrigo plateau and drops about 400m in a 2 km.  For the section we ran it was mostly walking/jumping the drops with two large abseils of about 50-60m each.  Some nice gorge sections and some great jumps.  Beautiful spot and was unbelievably warm!!  I get really cold normally but I spent most of the day in just shorts and thermals.  Canyoning doesn’t get much better.

Enjoy the pics!!

Stephen

I drove up to Gladstone by myself with the intention of trying to catch a Barra in lake Awoonga while I was there. I’ll write up a seperate report for that in the kayak fishing section!!

After a 12 hour drive up to Gladstone, and a days rest, I jumped on the boat with the rest of the crew and we headed off on the 2.5 hour journey to Heron Island. The Island sits about 75km offshore to the NE of Gladstone. The boat ride was long and choppy and many got sick. I suffer from seasickness easily so i had taken some “kwells” and so wasn’t sick at all!! We arrived at the Island got unpacked, had an orientation to the Heron Island Research Centre and then had our first lectures. We were going to be doing a lot of study, lectures, pracs, assignments and exams during our 8 day stay so we were all keen to get in a bit of diving any chance we could get and we were quick to grab the snorkeling gear as soon as we were done for the day and any other free time we had. We got up for a snorkel at 5am most mornings to fit it in before breakfast. With all the activity and early mornings and late nights I was getting more and more tired by the end of the week!!

Throughout the week we had a lot of learning to be done but it was enjoyable learning as the course was very interesting and I’m sure we all came out knowing a lot more about coral reefs than when we came.

I had my camera on me pretty much all the time while on the island (except when i was sleeping, or showering etc cause that would be weird!!). This meant that i had a myriad of Photo’s to go through and edit/cull during the trip. While on the trip I decided it might be an idea to have a video made from all the photos to show at the end of the trip. So during one of the free time sections at the end of the week i put together a video. We showed it on the last night after everything was done and it was a good wrap up to the week. Here’s the vid below. It contains a lot of photos in a short time and has some ‘IN’ jokes you may not get but enjoy. If you want a closer look at the pics, there’s some posted below too!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I did a lot of underwater photography stuff while on the island and really enjoyed trying to get close to critters to get the pics. I really couldn’t get enough of the diving and we did it pretty much everyday at least!! I also got some terrestrial pics that I was happy with as well. I was using my ‘olympus 8000 tough’ camera. It’s 10m waterproof (which i tested), 2m shockproof, 12 megapix, and I reckon it takes pretty good pics for a point and shoot type camera. It’s very handy as you can just carry it around and not worry about dropping it or getting it wet and you don’t have to worry about an underwater case. You can go straight from shooting pics on land and then dive in the water!! I wouldn’t use it for scuba diving though as it’s only 10m waterproof!!

Anyway back to the trip. There was a gastro outbreak while we were on the island which made things a bit more interesting (it’s not the time you want to be sick!!) but i didn’t get it.

We also went on a couple of boat snorkels on the outside of the reef as well as did a few surveys out on the reef flat. There was something new and interesting everyday and I was never really bored (which is pretty good, considering we were doing uni!!).

After 8 days it was finally time to go home and we jumped on the boat and the trip was far quicker and smoother with less sickness. We arrived back in Gladstone and everyone began to go their separate ways, except me!!! My car, which had been parked in secure parking at the wharf, had a flat battery and wouldn’t even clutch start!! Luckily, with the help of some other guys from the trip, I was able to jump start the car and i was off home………..Well at least for 30 mins. I decided to camp at the Boyne river on my way, to get some rest for the big drive the next day, and so spent the night in a fairly wet swag but still got a good nights sleep. It took another 12 hours home in one day and i was back to Sawtell. Home at last (which my pregnant wife was quite happy about!!!).

Some more pics below.

Smile for the camera!!

and it's not even Christmas!!

I can seeeeee youuuuuu!

Well finally I got out for a fish in my kayak.  This was the first trip in my kayak and offshore for while.  I’ll keep it short as I don’t remember a lot about the day other than it was full of variety.

I paddled out to pig island off coffs harbour.  It started fairly calm but there was a bit of swell and the wind came up a bit once I was out.  I was just keen to get into some fish, especially the kingies that were there last time I went out there.  It ended up one of those classic mixed bags you get sometimes when fishing.  I ended up catching over 7 species.  All in exactly the same way. Plastics retrieved erratically from the wash around the northern side of the island.  It was great to see the variety.  Nothing massive but I was able to keep a kingy and a got a decent salmon that threw the hooks at the boat.  All up a good day but a bit too much sun on the legs.  Now you can just oogle the pics!!

Leading up to christmas it had been windy everyday with NE sea breezes!!  I was hanging to get a fish offshore but haven’t had a chance.  So on boxing day I decide i’m gonna get out for a fish no matter what the weather, just probably not offshore.  I organise with a mate to paddle right up Pine creek and chase some bass, GTs and Jacks in the arvo.  

By the time that comes around it had started raining and I get that phone call:  “are we still gonna go out??” i.e ‘it’s looking a bit too wet!’.  I say that I’m going out no matter what but suggest that we should maybe go out somewhere that we can stay closer to the launch (to appease those who are less convinced!!!)  We decide same launch just stay in bonville creek.

I was getting my stuff into the car and it starts to rain harder and I get another call:  “How about now?  You still going out?  In this??”.  I re-affirm my position: “Yep still going out”, but realising the tone behind the phone call I also offer the option of piking with no ramifications of name calling etc if my mate doesn’t want to go.  That option is quickly taken and confirmed and I am now open to going where ever I want at whatever time.  This new availability of choices turns out to be not a freeing development, as I then fiddled for over an hour and ummed and aaahed about where to go.  After long deliberations I decide to head to the top of a local creek on the basis of a successful trip and report on this section of river by adrian.

Finally I get on the water around 5ish.  The water was very fresh (and felt like a bath at about 26 degrees!!) and so I decide to head downstream.  I had my basscada topcrawler on my big rod and my new hawk lure (fake chubby) on the little rod.  The fish were just spooking from the surface lures so I stuck with the little rod and got a couple of bream. I was throwing the chubby replica around in about two feet of water over a little gravel race and got a few hits.  I could see a fair few bream cruising around, so I was mostly just sight fishing, looking for fish then casting at them.  Intently looking around for movement I see a dark shape come up onto the gravel bed.  “there’s one!!!”  oh.  That’s pretty big!   oh.  That’s a bull shark!!!  He was about 1m long and just cruised straight up to my kayak, hung around for a bit nearly right under me and then just kept cruising around the shallows.  I threw a popper near it and it came up and had a good look but didn’t take it straight away and I didn’t really persist as it would be an unfair fight with my overkill 12lb leader!!! He stayed around for a bit until I turned on my camera, then he went back into the deeper pool of course!!!.  

Blurry $5.95 fake chubby

Oh well, that was cool, and worth the rain (it wasn’t too wet).  After that I had a few casts at some snags then decided to head upstream where i’d had more success in the past.  By the time I’d dragged up the first couple of gravel races it was starting to get dark so I moved back to the surface lures.  I started to get bream hits on the basscada nearly every cast but I only had single hooks and they weren’t hooking up, and they gave up after a few hits each cast.  I threw the cheap chubby at a snag to try and get a hook up and I did immediately except that this fish was long and thrashed around on the surface, a nice little flatty in the fresh water!!!

Nice flatty from the sweet water.

I continued up the creek and got a big surface hit/boof about 100m up from the flatty.  It was definitely a bass.  I had a few more casts at the snag. Didn’t get the bass but got a a persistent little bream.

persistent fella with a big stomach!

Now it was totally dark and things started to heat up.  I paddled a few hundred metres upstream to a tree covered pool with steep sides that had usually produced in the past.  It was quite hard to cast as it was pitch black and there are lots of trees hanging down to the water in spots.  First cast under the trees got a nice hit.  I paused, no follow up hit so I twitched the basscada a bit then continued the crawling retrieve.  No strike, so I cast back into the same spot.  I wound about 2 feet and then smack!!!!   I was on.  Everything tightened up and line began to pull off the reel and I was promptly pulled straight in under the trees.  Trying to keep my rod low to keep it from snagging I copped a face full of branches while keeping the fish from going back into the logs below!!  I was able to push myself out of the branches and then bring the fish in to the yak while out in the clear.  He put up a nice fight but kept it clean and came into the net with a bit of prompting!  When he laid down next to a ruler he was 43cm, my pb bass!!! Got some pics and now he’s currently back out there adding cm by cm so that I can get him when he’s over 50cm!!!  

PB bass- 43cm and nice and healthy looking.

mmmmm that's a tasty looking basscada!

After that I was running out of time but for the next 30 mins I got at least a hit from every place I tried (mostly bream hits) and got another two bass (both around 34cm) and a bream. 

Another feisty little bass - 34cm

It’s great to be back into some bass for the first time this summer and great to find them again healthy and fat in my local!!  It was also cool to catch flathead, bream, bass AND see a bull shark all within a few hundred metres of each other!!

 
The day started at 6:50am when I left Sawtell for Platypus flats on the nymboida river. The plan was to meet a mate Tom (a fellow rafting guide who had camped up there overnight with his family) to run safety for his raft which would be holding various blood relatives, one of which was celebrating being a year older than last year.

When I arrived at 8:45am I was promptly informed that we had a slight problem! A number of thoughts immediately went through my head……’There’s not enough paddles’ ‘The pfd’s don’t fit’ ‘Tom forgot the raft’ ‘The river ran out’ ‘The platypuses have had too many puggles and blocked up the rapids’……but it was none of these!! The problem was that Tom had been up all night vomiting and being generally not asleep or well!

We decided that it would be the smart thing to leave the paddling for another day, and contrary to previous trends and precedence we opted for the smart choice. This left me 2 hours and 800 vertical meters from home with no-one to paddle the river with me.

So having already made the trip up the hill i decided to have an explore  at  a couple put ins I’ve been wanting to check out.  

1st I had a look at access to the nymboida from the norm jolly grove above the beilsdown river.  I couldn’t really find a track down to the river and having no map the only sensible thing to do was just keep going down hill.  So I found a little creek and followed it for over an hour from where it had no water to where it spilled over a 10m waterfall into the nymboida river.  Was i nice hike in the end.  Some cool spots and had lunch on some rocks in the middle of the nymbo.  Also came upon a lyre bird really close and it freaked out and started screaming like a person as it flew off, kinda freaky.  

The baby creek starts to carry some water!

The nymbo.

Relaxing spot for a rest and lunch!

Hundreds of years of wood covered in moss!

This one was upright and 8m around the trunk.

After 3hrs and only 4 leaches I was back at my car and off to my next mission.

I’ve been wanting to get to cedar falls for a while to check out a way of puting into rosewood creek with our kayaks.  It’s supposed to be a great run through almost untouched old growth forest.  I decided to run the track as it was 3pm and the track was supposed to be a 3.5hr walk.  The track is great!  I basically drops you down a ridge so that you end up at the base of cedar falls which is about half way down the dorrigo escarpment.  Basically Rosewood runs off the plateau and  drops about 200 vertical metres in nearly one go.  Here are some pics from the bottom of cedar falls which is about half way down the escarpment.

cedar falls pools

view looking up at cedar falls

from the next step down

looking down from the same spot as the last pic

There were a whole lot of fish in the pools in the middle of this nearly vertical drop don’t know whether they got UP or Down there.

Managed to find some eels!

some kind of gudgeon i think?

I managed to run back to the start in less than 30mins as it was getting dark by the time I’d finished exploring.  I also managed to get really close to two different lyre birds.  I got some video of them feeding from only metres away which I was pretty stoked with too.

So after a day that started with “we’ve got a bit of a problem”, it ended up a pretty fun day to enjoy by myself and I’m now really keen to try rosewood creek after some rain!!

worleybird

ps.  I’m still itchy as from the many ticks that became apparent over the next few days.

Anyway.  On to the topic of tLAW.  Mainly I started this blog cause I was writing numerous accounts and posting many pics of the same adventure on several different forums and with not the fastest internet connection and many limits to 3 pics per post etc it was very tedious uploading my adventures.  So, in a victory for total laziness tLAW was born and will now become……

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!    (Micallef! It’s so hard to look away!!)

(cont.)….tLAW will now become the primary place to post my adventures and I will link them to appropriate forums with sneak peak pics.

Anyway, just so we can start off I’ll do an update of the Life Adventures of Worleybird.

Worleybub was born at very young age!

Later in life I went on to play a major role as a child star in this photo.

Through a combination of respiration and mitosis, no thanks to a lack of support from school bullies, I slowly grew into an adult human male.  During this growing stage I became convinced that not only was the bible true, but that Jesus was the answer to everything that’s wrong with me and this world.  I decided that living for God would be most important in my life.(even more important kayaking or girls or family even!!) Click here for what I believe, or just talk to me!

After about 24 human years (unknown real years) I had almost completed a Marine Science Degree and 2 years of training at my local church.  It was after this in 2004 that I started work as an adventure tour guide in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia and my love for kayaking and whitewater began.

I had always grown up around water. windsurfing, surfing, wakeboarding etc.  

worleybird in NSW wavesailing final.

woopi final 2007

With this new job my love of water grew even more as I trained up as a rafting guide as well as a sea kayak and surf rafting guide. (Ironically I get really cold, even in the warmest of water and I abhor sand, sand on stuff or any kind of bodily sandiness!! )

Centre drop - Nymboida river

centre drop again just a bit less boat!

It was during this period I met and married my wife….Well when I met her she wasn’t my wife- so really it should be ‘during this period I met a total stranger who became my friend and then as the relationship grew we decided to get married and she became my wife.  (imagine that.  Married a total stranger!!)

Through my in laws I was provided with a sit on top sea kayak to use and a seed was planted that would grow into another full blossoming hobby.  Kayak fishing!  Since then I have enjoyed many fishful and fishless trips in around the beautiful coffs coast.

Ready to go-charlesworth bay.

wonder what the best whale lure would be?

not a bad day off sawtell.

GT in kalang river.

Some big fish.

And little fish!

Next to grow was the gripping fever that is whitewater kayaking!  After guiding on the nymboida river and becoming very interested in hard boating (rafters reference to whitewater kayaking) I finally bit the bullet and got the antidote (of sorts).  I bought my very own kayak around easter 2009.  Below is  a vid that describes the first few months of kayaking.

My baby boat learning to swim!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now that you’re updated/forewarned you can either look forward to the next adventure or, delete your history and cache so that you never come here again, even accidentally.

worleybird