Ai Karumba!

Well we're here at last, despite hearing stories all the way about no barra being caught. Someone's got to catch the first one, haven't they?

After 6 days here, surviving 38C temperatures, and having tried everything we can think of, we still haven't scored a barra. We've got a cast net and fished with live mullet, we've offered king prawns, colourful lures of many shapes and sizes and even donated several to the beautiful blue waters. But still the god of satisfied barra fishermen is holding out.

Plenty of time to observe the friendly local culture - many campers come every year and spend up to 6 months soaking up the warmth, enjoying five o'clock drinkies with large groups of mates and obeying the daily imperative of taking their fishing gear out for a run and celebrating the occasional big catch at the fish cleaning tables. All the old timers say its the worst year for barra that they've known...and the tides really aren't in our favour...lowish high tides, only one high tide a day and that's at midnight. However we don't give up, and continue to put in the hours of fishing because, what else can you do?

I say "we" have been fishing, but really its Russ slaving away to keep the wolf from the door. I have to confess to having spent lovely hours reading and more reading and a bit of blogging to pretend that I haven't become a complete slob here.

With the sun setting over the water, sunsets are spectacular, especially if there's a bit of cloud.....but that's rare.

Here is Russ showing off his new cast net skills

 

And after exploring every option he caught another black jewfish that was possibly just a little undersize so we threw him back.

 

 

                                                       Russ doing what he loves best

 

Beautiful light at sunset looking west over the Gulf of Carpentaria. A big barge carrying bauxite slurry to the mother ship 35k off shore, eventually bound for China.