Saturday 31 August 2013 – Hanging around in Hervey Bay

Up before 7.30 this morning, Grant was up by 6.30, so he tells me - and just because I haven’t mentioned the 4.30am butcher bird chorus lately, it doesn’t mean it’s not still happening, ‘cos it is – loud and long!

It was about 10.30 when we left for our walk this morning, and today we turned left at the shoreline and walked in the direction of Vernon Point.  The tide was well out, so we waded in the shallows for about 40 minutes in that direction before turning round, stopping off at another of the regularly positioned kiosks and had a cuppa.  I wasn’t impressed!  As requested they had given me a pot of boiling water and a tea bag on the side so that I could make the tea as I like it.  When I poured the boiling water into the cup ready to dunk the teabag, the water was a yucky yellowish brownish colour. And after I dunked the teabag and had a sip it was dreadful.  Grant took it back and they happily replaced it – no explanation as to the reason for the discoloured water. I hate to think!

Back at the camp by about twelve thirty, we found it had magically filled again!  As it is late in the season, all the caravan parks are now looking only half full, but it’s the weekend, so it fills with weekenders! At the moment we are pretty well surrounded by fellow Victorians and a smattering of Kiwis.

After lunch we sat around and read and talked, while Grant prepared his fishing lines for tonight’s attack on the denizens of the deep.

As high tide was about 5.30 tonight, we left here to go fishing at Torquay jetty (only a couple of kilometres from here), where Grant caught his shark last night.  By the way, we found out today that it was a black tip reef shark.  The jetty was pretty crowded as it was another beautiful day, but we managed to get a possie near the end of the jetty, but at the side.  The first 40 minutes looked very promising.  I caught two school mackerel, but they weren’t big enough to keep (they were about 30cm each and ‘keeping’ size is no less than 50cm), so we put them back.  Then Grant caught one about half an hour later – I reckon it was the same one as I had hooked twice, so back it went, too.  There were quite a lot of bites happening till then, but then they just went off.  When we had fed them almost a full bag of pilchards we decided to call it quits and come home (6.30).

Just on dusk the sky filled with flying foxes (fruit bats) migrating to who knows where.  We know where!! There were thousands of them, heading in the direction of Fraser Island which they visit each evening.  The mass exodus lasted about ten or fifteen minutes, then stopped as suddenly as it started! 

But all was not lost after our failed fishing session because we had last night’s catch to eat for tea, and it was delicious.