Oz Circumnavigation
Thursday July 2nd, 2009 - Departure to the Houtman Abrolhos 28.58.54 S 114.0.99 E
After a few hectic days of running around we departed today at 1200 hrs heading north to the Houtman Abrolhos group of islands east of Geraldton.
This group is the lowest coral reef in the Indian ocean and flourishes from the warm currents coming down from Indonesia, named the Leeuwin current.
Western Australia has many places named after the Dutch explorers who were around here in the early 17th century. The Houtman Abrolhos was named after a Dutchman, and the word Abrolhos is a Portuguese expression for "open your eyes."
This place was made famous for the wreck of the Dutch cargo ship the Batavia, which also has infamy for being the ship that had the worlds biggest ever mutiny. Of the 316 people on board, 276 scrambled ashore safe only to be butchered, except 40, after the Owners representative took a long boat and a handful of sailors to Java to find a rescue ship.
I am currently reading a book on the events surrounding this rebellion so I will relate to these sad events when we arrive tomorrow about midday. When we do we will be up on the fly bridge with our polaroids on and going very slowly as there are thousands of uncharted "bommies" around the islands.
Houtman Abrolhos group of islands off the coast of Western Australia. Source: Google Earth
We plan to stay here for about 4 days and do some diving and of course a lot of fishing.
It is reported that at least 17 boats have perished here over the last 4 centuries.
Our first anchorage after leaving Perth was the Palseart Is Group which is the most southern group in the Abrolhos.
It was an interesting experience coming into this coral reef fringed area as the charts were somewhat lacking in soundings, so it was up on the flybridge with all eyes peeled.
Our arrival time was late and we had the sun in our eyes which is not conducive to spotting "bommies" which are coral heads coming from nowhere. However we safely made it in to just off Post Office Island and deployed a heap of chain rode, and celebrated our safe arrival with Tony's Margaritas made in my new blender.
Fishing next day was fruitless until we decided to seek the advice of a local who had just arrived to work on his pearl farm right next to us. He said go 600 m over there to where the ledge drops off, and no sooner had my sinker hit the bottom, we were on the snapper.
As some bad northerlies were on the way in two days, and with poor shelter from northerlies, we departed at 1000 hrs on Sunday 5th to head north to Shark Bay 170 nm away.
Shark Bay is renowned as the best fishing location in Australia. My new MaxsSea Time Zero shows the biggest chlorophyl concentration on the WA coast here, and we are told everything that swims will be found in plentiful proportions.
Just heard that Rick and Dianne will join us up in the Kimberley, and they will fly in on a float plane to the Horizontal Falls.
(to be continued)
