Cape Keraudren 8th September
Between BarnHill and the little cape we stopped off in Eighty mile beach. The beach was long , the water milky and the grass green but it was a tad monotonous . Some good fishing and walking was had and we met up again with Lyn the fish and Sue .
Cape Keraudren is the point that the 1827km long rabbit fence entered the Indian Ocean having started in Starvation Harbour down in the south coast. Its aim was to prevent rabbits entering and damaging agricultural areas of WA. There were three fences in the end and this employed 35 people repairing as well as rabbiting and camel tending.
The little cape provided us with a cracking stay with long sandy beaches , rock pools and a high tide line that had lots of interesting shells.It was made more special as we were joined by Sue and Lyn “the fish”.
The days were spent fishing , walking , pottering , drinking beers and itching sand fly bites. Now sand fly is a generic term given to biting insects of which there are 270 different kinds. If the wind is blowing they hide but at dusk and dawn if there is little wind ( as we found out to our cost ) you get eaten alive even with the best repellents. Whats worse is that you dont feel them biting and they take at least 3 days to disappear and until then your skin itches more than if you were wearing Harris Tweed undercrackers , a barbed wire vest lubricated with chillie paste infested with fire ants. So even paradise has its drawbacks !
Sue in particular got them bad and in the morning after very little sleep she applied so much calamine lotion that made her look to be the victim of a toothpaste IED.
Lyn and I had to dig deep literally when we realised we were out of beer and Lyn wanted to spend some time with Victoria his mistress ( VB) and it is illegal to watch a man drink alone. The roadhouse was our only option at 85 bucks per carton. So the welsh and scots overcame our frugal genes and splashed out. We have come a long ways since a scotsman and a welshman fought over a penny back in 1889 and invented copper wire.
Fishing was productive with high notes being a nice bronze whaler providing steaks for all and two of the best Threadfin Salmon both in terms of fighting attributes and size too. On one day Lyn was hitting a barren patch and was suitably disgusted when i fluked two fish from my three hook set up ! All the best friendships have to be tested and ours was early on 🙂
I had an early morning jaunt along the beach and found some shells for Kate.
As I was beachcombing i came across these Oyster Catcher eggs too.
Lyn is as daft as a brush and twice as hairy . He is probably best summed up by his zen like photo ! I love it .
