The Kayak Trip - Day 1 (Saturday 9 July)

Michelle and Dave picked us up from the hostel in the morning and we went to pick up the family of 6 from their hotel (Big Mike (dad) and 5 kids: John, Max, Catherine, Andrew and (little) Mike).  First impressions were pretty awesome. Andrew bounded over to introduce himself while the others were loading their bags. John introduced himself as an erotic dancer. We could already see his arse-crack. The trip was starting to look a little less sedate. And as we loaded their gear into the trailer we saw bottle after bottle of good red wine.  Bugger, we thought, we should have bought booze after all...

That's the jetty, there. Big eh?

We hopped into the bus and drove two hours south to a wee town called Lucinda.  While it only has one shop and a post office to its name, Lucinda is a sugar town (much of what I'd seen of inland Far North Queensland has been sugar plantations. Makes for a very, very boring landscape indeed) and sugar means big money. Big enough money to build a six kilometre jetty. SIX kilometres!

[Factoid 1 (with thanks to Tim for today's history lesson): Joh Bjelkie Peterson was the Queensland Premier who oversaw the building of that there jetty. Joh was famous for getting things done, for being corrupt (Google "Bjelkiemanders" to see one of his more flamboyant rorts), for inventing the clearing ball technique of tying a large metal ball on a chain between two tractors and dragging it through the forest to pull down everything in sight, and for marrying Flo, who made good pumpkin scones. So, legend has it that the jetty didn't actually need to be six kilometres long. In order to deliver the sugar to the ships, something half a kilometre shorter would have sufficed. But by going the extra half-km, Joh was able to get around union labour laws, which only extend so far out to sea, then stop. So it appears that if you build a long enough jetty, you can have off-shore labour right on your own doorstep!]

[Factoid 2: Lucinda is also famous for fishing. Apparently, massive schools of fish like barramundi and tuna come into the channel to feed in the nutrient-rich waters between Hinchinbrook Island and the mainland. From the photo, it looks as though that would be a lovely sheltered side to paddle... But, it turns out, that would be the croc-infested mangrove side, with no beaches to land on and only the sound of crocs barking like dogs (factoid 3: crocs bark like dogs) to go to sleep to. Michelle told Tim a story of a long-distance paddler who paddled up the inside channel and, not finding anywhere to land, tied his boat to a mangrove tree and slept in its branches. He told Michelle he had ummm'd and ahhhh'd about whether or not to walk to the nearby farmhouse, as he'd heard the farm dogs barking all night. Instead he slept. The next day he got back in his boat and paddled off, not realising that there was no farmhouse, there were no dogs, just hungry crocs waiting in the mud hoping he'd climb down for a night time dip! Eek!]

So, lugging all the boats and gear down on to Lucinda beach, not all that far from the Land of the Crocodiles, we started getting to know each other a bit better. It was hard work (the lugging bit, not the getting to know people bit) and most people did their best to make it happen. We had a brief intro to how the boats worked and how to paddle (lucky me having already had a few pointers from Tim I was feeling pretty confident I'd be ok with this part...). 

And then, in we got. We entered the ocean from that bit of beach there in the photo between the pointy jetty and the pointy bit of land closest to you. Yippeeeee! It was sooooo cool! We paddled pretty much in a straight line; under the legs of the jetty to that bit of land on the other side of the channel. That's Hinchinbrook Island. The Island of Crocodiles.

I think that spider-like thing on the beach is the tree whose roots we sat on

Tim probably did all the work on that first paddle, if I'm honest. It took a few hours for me to remember how to not use my arms or shoulders to power my paddling. It's all core. Hardcore (har di har). We had lunch sat on the roots of a very cool tree which had been lifted out of the sand (thanks to Google maps for the picture). It was our first taste of the food to come and it was good! And plenty for everyone... 

After lunch, another hour's paddle....