The Hinchinbrook Channel runs between mainland Australia and the mountainous Hinchinbrook Island. Either side of the main channel are flat and shallow but still navigable narrow side channels that wind through mangrove swamps and a few small jungle covered hilly islands. The entire area is a world heritage listed national park.
The trip from Orpheus Island to the southern entrance of the Hinchinbrook Channel was timed to coincide with a high tide as not only is the southern entrance a bit shallow in parts but our planned anchorage in Dungeness required us to cross a sandbar that almost dries at low tide.
Along the way, Robert caught another spotted mackerel with a trolling lure. Bigger than the previous one, this one is big enough for two dinners.
As we got close to the southern entrance, we saw a whale close by lifting its huge tail and whacking it back down several times in the exact spot we were headed. Luckily it moved off in time.
Approaching the tiny town of Lucinda, its 5.76 km long jetty can be seen from miles away. It's the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere and follows the curvature of the earth. It is actually a long conveyor belt and at the end of it ships berth to load bulk sugar.
Dungeness is even smaller than Lucinda - one shop, one petrol pump, one motel, one pub, about 6 houses and zillions of mostly fishing boats.
Negotiating the river anchorage is very tight and tricky and shallow. We once briefly touched our keel on on a sandbar but managed to reverse off without getting stuck. Eventually we found a safe spot to anchor.
As the tide dropped, more sandbanks started appearing inbetween moored boats.
We did a short walk around Dungeness to stretch our legs and bought 2 single bananas and a packet of crisps for the equivalent of over R85!
On Saturday we left Dungeness just before high tide to cross the sandbar into the Hinchenbrook Channel and moved northwards through the channel. Mangroves line both sides of the channel. On the one side, the mountains on Hinchinbrook Island national park create a magnificent backdrop to the waterway. Very scenic and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to experience it.
Along the way we passed many small boats fishing. It must be Queensland's most popular pastime. I will always associate the Queenslanders with a typical picture of a couple in a tinny (metal dinghy) in the blazing sun intent on their fishing. We have seen that throughout our trip so far and Hinchinbrook Channel has more than its fair share of tinny couples.
Haycock Island is a tiny speck of a thickly wooded island in the middle of the channel.
We chose Gaylundah Creek as our overnight anchorage. One of many very pretty creeks in the channel with dead calm still water, thick green mangroves and the backdrop of mountains.
It's paradise until the late afternoon when the mozzies and sandflies begin to descend in their billions. We burned mozzie coils and slathered ourselves with insect repellent. We got away relatively unscathed with several dozen kamikaze sandfly bites each. Sandfly bites are worse than mozzies, the bite is larger, much itchier and takes more than a week to stop itching. All this from an insect one can barely see. The next morning we woke up to a thin carpet of dead sandflies throughout the boat. My job to sweep them up while Robert indulged in fish lure sorting and displaying techniques. I glazed over the part about teasers, tracers and stragglers.
The next morning we took a scenic tour on Pegasos around a maze of mangrove lined creeks and inlets. Intriguing and picturesque and easy to get lost in the maze.
We stopped for lunch just before joining up with one of the main channels, Boat Passage, and Robert discovered a fish caught in his new arrangement of lures trolled behind the boat. This fish turned out to be a type of herring, known to be bony. Robert hooked it on to a lure as bait fish and we set off down Boat Passage towards the northern part of Hinchinbrook Channel. When Robert reeled in the lure he discovered that some large fish had bitten through the metal and nylon trace, having taken the herring and two large hooks at the same time. Perhaps its just as well we didn't have to deal with taking whatever fish it was onto Pegasos, it must have had really big teeth.
Our intended anchorage of Scraggy Point turned out to be swell prone and we changed our minds and crossed to the other side of the channel and anchored off the small town of Cardwell. It has an extensive shoaling bottom and we anchored in only 1.9m.
We were running low on groceries and the next morning we went ashore. Cardwell is a small and dry looking town and the supermarket had hardly a choice of items.
There is a long jetty off Cardwell with a long beach on either side of it. The water is very murky and although warmish, it looks unfriendly. An indistinct fin gliding past didn't make it more welcome. In the late afternoon we motored back across the channel and around the top of Hinchinbrook Island to anchor in Macushla Bay for the night.
It was a bumpy journey with short steep waves and we faced into the wind all the way. We passed a huge turtle swimming laboriously against the chop who looked as surprised to see us as we were to see it.. The highlight for Robert was the reward of a new fish in his collection of lures trolled behind the boat at 6 knots. Not sure what it is, but quite delicious and big enough for 2 meals.
Macushla Bay:
The wind dropped and our chosen spot was calm, murky, quiet, lonely and pitch dark with mysterious splashes, plops and light bumps against the boat. The fish scraps Robert threw into the water when cleaning the fish must have drawn some visitors. Sometimes it's best not to go investigate.
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