21.07.10 Distant shores

Surfers Paradise (winter time????)
Noosa from the mouth of the Noosa River

Fishing in the Noosa river

The family (except Matt who lives down in Dunedin) took a break away from our winter, and headed over to Queensland Australia for 9 days R&R. The trip over was interesting, we were delayed 4 hours, our first plane broke and had to be fixed. The second plane also broke and had to be fixed so we waited for a 3rd plane to arrive from Australia to take us over, that too broke but was quickly fixed and we were able to go. They say things come in 3's, thank god they were all on the ground when they broke. The weather was good with the day time temps in the 25 degrees area and the sea temp 19-20 degrees. I managed to go fishing at the mouth of the Noosa river, we were going rock fishing but the swell was too big so we took the easy way out, I managed to catch a couple of flatheads and my mate Barry caught a bream (looks like our snapper). Sadly I didn't get any more fishing in as there were too many females in our group and we spent most of the time being dragged around all the shopping malls in Australia. But now it is back to work and back to the winter.

03.07.2010

With Matt home from Dunedin and the forecast good for Saturday we took the covers off Gazebo and hitched her on to the Prado Friday night. The frost in the morning was a good one, the hose was frozen so it took awhile to get the water running to clean the windscreens, we arrived at the ramp to find everyone else had the same idea. We headed out to the drop off to drift fish for Hapuka. On the the way we had the great pleasure it see 2 whales doing their thing, they were on the way north, we were not able to identify them but I suspect that they were Right Whales on their annual migration to warmer waters. SOAPBOX time, I can't understand the Japanese desire to hunt these magnificent mammals, it's such a pleasure to see them in the wild "ban all whaling forever" any way we reached BS1A and started our drifts, over a period of 3 hours we managed to catch 1 bluenose and a number of small sharks, not the best result but it was good to be back out on the sea and the joy of seeing the whales will last for years.