Bundy and beyond........

Leaving Pancake Creek for Lady Musgrave Island.

When we announced we were going to go to Queensland cruising, everyone said go to Lady Musgrave Island. So, true to their word on the 28th of august you would of found us at anchor at Lady Musgrave.

The raucous sail to Lady Musgrave.

Are we there yet? 

Lady Musgrave is a coral cay, a coral cay is an island surrounded by a reef.

Stella being a princess...

The fortification outside of Lady Musgrave (the reef).

 Approaching destination: Lady Musgrave.

The reef protects the area inside it from swell. There are also little bulbs of coral spotted around the place, called coral bommies.  We soon realised that coral bommies would provide excellent snorkelling so we donned the snorkels and flippers. Much to our surprise these bommies were home to brightly coloured fish and even more to our surprise majestic turtles.

I wonder who lives in there?

Young minds overcome by curiosity.

Accidental-but-really-cool shot....

 One slight downside of going to Lady Musgrave was that we would be out of internet reception - completely. That was bad for two reasons, the first being we would not be able to check the weather forecast. But second and more tragically we wouldn't be able to check the AFL scores, we were not able to be informed about the Geelong's 111 point win over the Demons until we left - which was way too long for us.When we had last checked the forecast they had predicted that the wind would turn and it would blow us out of Lady Musgrave.

Happy family at Musgrave.

 So reluctantly we settled down for the night, knowing it would be our last in this wonderfully gorgeous place. Wonderfully gorgeous doesn't really give this place justice, with it's stunning blue water and flourishing communities of marine animals beneath the water. Anyway that morning we left, we felt like our hearts had been left behind on Musgrave because we desperately wanted to stay. 24 hours in such a beautiful place just did not seem fair.
We sailed in the direction of Fraser Island aiming to arrive there around two o'clock in the morning, we were in for big night. In a few hours we were within internet reception. We nervously checked the AFL scores, which resulted with much celebration and singing of the Geelong anthem. Then dad, ever so reasonably, pointed out we still hadn't checked the forecast yet. We were very disappointed when we were informed that we could've stayed at Lady Musgrave for another day.
We settled in Bundaberg for the night, then headed onto Fraser Island. We are still at Fraser Island to the very moment in which i am writing this. But we are content here on Fraser with sand dunes to climb and dingoes to track.

At anchor.

 A Fraser Island turtle realising that it couldn't eat us....

Descent of the sand dune.

View of Triddar from an insanely big sand dune 

Sand dunes that look like ski slopes.

Stunning Fraser Island

 We are heading home to Hobart on Sunday, but we are planning to ditch the flight and stay put....
Written by Lucia.

Great Keppel Island is great! (AKA...... an adventure playground for kids)

We decided to leave Pancake Creek with the strong southeasterly trade wind that had settled in over this part of the Qld coast for the last 4-5 days. Its a typical winter wind where a big high pressure system sits over NSW directing a fresh to strong SE wind of about 20-25knots over the Queensland coast north of Brisbane. This seemed to be a great excuse to go north. So we reefed down all our sails and went for it. We wanted to see the Great Keppel island that mum and dad had heard about so much during their childhood and adolescence. There used to be TV ads all the time for holidays in the "Keppel Isles" so we wanted to see what was left.

The sail across Keppel Bay was fantastic, quite fast and rough, but we all hunkered down and did our bit to hang on and be safe. We got in to Great Keppel at about 730pm, very tired and promptly fell into our bunks for a well earned rest. We woke to the great sight of wide, clean, sandy beaches and a quite steep and well wooded island to explore. in Pancake Creek, we had made friends with a group of people on a boat from Brisbane who had just been to Keppel and they raved about the walks there (although Pete did say they were "challenging"). We decided on the lighthouse walk (mum and dad are lighthouse nuts!), a round trip of about 11.6km.

As we started we found that many of the track markers had been beautifully laid out on engraved and painted rocks by the local residents, the Svendsons. It was a real treat to see the time, effort and work that they had put into making our trekking so much fun. Thank you, Svendson family! We weren't really very well prepared for this walk, light shoes, not much water, dry rocky and steep terrain to negotiate.








It soon became very clear to us that this track has a special significance.

We came across this...

Robbie Poate was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. He used to hang out in Great Keppel. His family have set out a wonderful track through the forest here to honour Robbies life. Robbies track is peppered with shells, bits of coral and quirky rest areas.

We found that at every step we took we were somehow reminded of Robbies life here and the incredible loss that his family must be enduring at this moment. The photos we took along the track hopefully will give you as sense of what we felt and experienced. We would like to thank the Poate family for sharing their loss with us at this time. We truly feel privileged to have traversed this path.

We eventually made our way to the lighthouse, or as Stella said... "we walked all this way to see this!!!?"



The amazing thing we did see was a large population of feral goats. Not sure about the history of these guys but maybe they were set up as a source of meat for shipwrecked sailors at some stage?
This part of the island was quite dry and rocky (maybe due to goats over-grazing??) and by this stage we were down to our last 250ml of water, and it was hot!

We finally made it back to the beach and discovered another part of the playground!

Triddars Travels: 16August

Triddars Travels 14 August

Whale Day is 11 of August!

From Big Woody Island we sailed to Platypus Bay.

Synchronised diving at Platypus bay

Dads arty shot

Lucia being a princess

another one of dads arty shots

We stayed there for one night we went for a walk along the beach, I made a turtle out of sand. Lucia built a  sand castle we also saw dingo foot prints. Then we went for a swim it was really refreshing. We left Platypus Bay in the early morning and motored up to Rooney Point.

whale wave

they are coming to get us.....

whale wave 2

whale wave 3

its coming

on our way to Rooney Pt

On the trip over we had been busting for a swim so once we had anchored we jumped in the water and swam around a bit then got out. Then we went for a walk on the beach and we slid down sand dunes then we swam back to the boat.

whale excited to see us!

whale close up

showing off its belly very close to the boat

very close to the boat!

even closer to the boat!

On the way back mum saw a little splash she thought it was a whale so we just swum back to the boat.  (this is serious) as soon as we got on to the boat, about thirty seconds later there were whales either side of us, there were three of them (you really don't know how big humpbacks are till they are two metres away from you) anyway one of the whales actually swam under us as soon as it got on the other side of us it showed off and revealed its fluorescent white belly to the side of the boat. We reckon it thought our black hull was another whale, it was AMAZING!!!!!!! so that's why we officially called the 11 of August Whale Day.

At Bundaberg Marina

The day after whale day we left Rooney point.  At  midnight the wind got up and mum and dad picked up the anchor and got us out of Rooney point. They sailed and motored all night to get to Bundaberg at around 8:30am, it was a really nice sail.
 written by stella