Island 1

This journey begins on an island - which shall remain nameless here - located somewhere along the south-east coast of Australia ...


Having driven south from our metropolis and with diving goggles, snorkels and fins now tucked into the compartments of our kayaks we paddled out into the late afternoon sunlight towards the island for a dive onto its long and broad reef.


I wish that I had a good underwater video camera as the flickering twiilight through swaying forests of cray kelp is cinematically splendid.

We floated cautiously over watchful wobbegong sharks, dived past curious eels surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands,of dinner plate-sized abalone and did our best to grasp at the unreachable antennae of prized crayfish retreating deeply into their dark rocky crevices.


A net full of spikey black sea urchins came back to shore with us and were later that same evening hungrily eaten with sliced tomatoes, crumbled fetta, torn basil leaf and freshly squeezed lemon juice in a manner that would make an Australo-Greek fisherman yearn for the Cyclades Islands:

Oh, and a pot full of black mussels drowned in a good green olive oil, crushed garlic, fresh cream and white wine - cooked over a roaring blackbutt log fire ...

YUM !

Island 2



The following day, and with the tribe now composed of four kayaks, we paddled off to our next destination - a small group of islands familiar to generations of sea kayakers along this coastline.

With autumn upon us, the tail end of a large high pressure weather system gave us a spanking Nor-nor-east wind and a following-sea towards the island's shore.

Sheer delight was experienced here as this previously untrialled kayak lifted in the following-sea conditions to surge forward in long and fast runs like an arrow. A great sensation after two years of sawing, planing, sanding, fibreglassing and varnishing.

Clouds gathering, the atmosphere palpably static and with the wind system about to crank around through the nor-west and turn into a charging sou-westerly weather change we took off back towards the coast.

A river

The evening's southerly change brought a cracking thunderstorm and heavy rainfall so on the new day we turned inland, through forests of spotted gum and understories of burrawang, to explore one of the south coast's better rivers ...

The river was charged from last night's rainfall.

Our saltwater kayaks climbed over perhaps a dozen small freshwater staircases and rills as we paddled upstream.
The most dramatic of these watery obstacles could not be photographed - as just trying to keep the kayak pointing into the current's flow takes two hands.

We all took unscheduled swims and on two occasions drove our kayaks at unfamiliar angles up into the branches of river trees.



Sincere thanks to Margaret for the roast river dinner.

And to Tony for skinning the caught river eel with his own teeth.

Island 3



Driving back down through forests of spotted gum to the coast ...

Australian salmon - caught on a hand reel with a Xmas tree lure - are not so great to eat, with the exception of being pulverised into spiced fish cakes. This one was returned to its sea home.

South coast tucker!

Wishing that we had another day (or six) on this island, the weather was closing in and telling us to make for the coast once again.

 

Back at Katie and Tony's south coast forest to eat the landscape that we had been paddling through ...

Bendalong bruschetta ~ Sourdough from Berry grilled over a blackbutt fire.

South coast freshwater eel ~ panfried in olive oil, garlic and red chillis.

The south coast island crays ~ poached variously between 5 and 7 minutes and dressed in lemons from a south coast garden.

Click on Older Posts (bottom right) to see remainder of this journey ...

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