Photo shows the Gold Coast's Broadwater and the nearby Pacific Ocean separated by South Stradbroke Island and the Southport Spit. Exit out from the Broadwater into the ocean is via the Seaway, a dredged channel that lies between island and Spit.

We are on a mooring in Iluka Harbour on the north side of the Clarence River in New South Wales, but leaving for the next safe anchorage south tomorrow.



Sundari in a very well protected spot in Iluka Bay near the rainforested coast within the Clarence River.



Sundari anchored near the barred entrance to the Clarence River - a lovely spot!

The New South Wales coast as we well know is beautiful, but in a different way to its northern neighbour. Gone are the myriads of islands and the coral of the Great Barrier Reef. In their place are great sweeps of beautiful beaches that lie between low headlands. This pattern is punctuated at regular intervals by rivers flowing into the Pacific from the Great Dividing Range that lies at some way inland.



Iluka Beach, typical of NSW's lovely surf beaches.

The NSW coast is readily accessed by car, although you can't see much of it by driving along the main north south highway, the Pacific Motorway. You have to keep deviating off the main drag to find the national parks, beaches and small coastal towns.

By boat, it's a different matter. There are few anchorages along the coast that can be accessed at any stage of the tide or wind direction. Most of the potential anchorages are in rivers that are entered over a bar. These bars are shallow and all potentially dangerous when the tide is ebbing against even a moderate wind or swell. Once you are in, you are never sure when you can get out again and, in summer, there is always the possibility that heavy rain in the headwaters sends a murky, swirling flood downstream.



Looking straight out through the river entrance. The "bar" is not even breaking. It's in temporary benign mode because of low swell and incoming tide, but it can swiftly become very nasty at other times!

Of course, every downside has an upside. Travelling by your own boat reduces the cost of visiting this part of Australia's east coast. Once anchored in a protected spot off a beach with few or no neighbours and only dolphins, ospreys and turtles for company, the pain of getting there melts away. Ashore, the busy summer crowds at the coastal seaside towns seem far away. The commercial campgrounds are heaving with summer holidaymakers, all cheek by jowl and paying through the nose for the privilege of renting a tiny piece of retail turf. Meanwhile, on the boat, there is nothing to pay and everything to enjoy.

We left the Gold Coast 10 days ago, without a grand plan of where we would end up. Maybe we won't get any further south than Sydney, or maybe we will make it all the way down to Tasmania. Hopefully, we will find a suitable mooring to rent while we make our planned overseas trips next year before sailing north again.

We had an easy overnight 90 nautical mile passage from the Gold Coast down to the Clarence River, the fourth in a series from the border (the Tweed, Brunswick and Richmond rivers were all passed). We have never been south of the Clarence by yacht - the last time we were here was not long after we bought Saraoni in 1998. We had sailed south after buying Saraoni in Airlie Beach and were ready to set off across the Tasman at the next port south of here (Coffs Harbour - a Customs port). Our plans turned 180o after being offered jobs in Darwin and we didn't actually make it over to New Zealand until a few years later.

The Clarence is a lovely area to explore and it would be easy to spend all summer here. The small towns of Iluka on the north shore and Yamba on the south shore have all the services you need and it's possible to sail 40 miles up the river to Maclean and Grafton, two towns we have passed through many times by car before. While here we have biked through the Iluka Rainforest Reserve, and up to Iluka Bluff and Woody Head on the Pacific coast north of the river, then from Yamba south to Angourie, where the Green and Blue Pools make nice natural swimming holes and where the 6 day Yuraygir Coastal walk starts. We have also been to and fro across the Clarence between Iluka and Yamba, bussed it up to Grafton and back and kayaked along the Esk River after dinghying it up through a labyrinth of mangrove channels from Iluka. The Esk is a narrow freshwater river that penetrates the wilderness of Bundjalung National Park that stretches north of Iluka.



Iluka is well known for its stretch of coastal rainforest, one of very few areas of this sort of habitat left on the lower east coast, We have been anchored or moored right next to it for the last 10 days!



Water lillies on the Esk River, a tannin stained waterway penetrating the wild heart of Bundjalung National park.



Yamba is a rapidly growing coastal town across the river from slumbering little Iluka, approached from the river through a narrow channel between sand banks and beach lined islands.



Selection of denizens encountered around the Clarence: from top left:
goanna at Woody Head, osprey with its prey
kookaburra with a snack, superb fairy wren
plover chick, water dragon.

Photo shows a drone view of our recent anchorage at Peel island, in South Moreton Bay. It's very popular as a safe anchorage in northerly winds, typical of summer. It's not so good when storms are around, as the heavy squalls normally come from the south west, making the anchorage a lee shore.

We are back on our mooring in the Karragarra Passage, just in time before the first real storms of the year rolled through from where they developed further out west, more or less where we spent a few days touring around last week car camping with Dennis the Diesel, who, as has already been reported, had an unexpected new lease on life.



Storm cells on the radar as they roll through over the Southern Moreton Bay islands.

Thunderstorms are a common phenomenon in early summer and sometimes later as summer advances into autumn, but it's not summer yet, at least from a pre climate change era timing!

Signs of an early summer were already around before our trip to Europe, but are in full swing now. Migrant waders have already been arriving from Alaska and Siberia and have occupied the mud and sand flats up and down the east coast. Koels and channel billed cuckoos are calling from nearby Karragarra, adding their calls to those of the resident kookaburras, cockatoos, bee-eaters and honeyeaters.

Ideas of sailing north to the southern islands of the Barrier Reef have been stymied after the string of northerly winds we have had ever since we arrived back from London - another early summer sign. We will be moving down to the Broadwater (Gold Coast) anchorage in a week's time and then waiting for the first weather window for the sail down towards Sydney and, perhaps,Tasmania. This time, unlike earlier this year, we have plenty of time to anchor hop down the coast, first across the Clarence bar into Yamba/Iluka, then Coffs Harbour, Port Stephens and into the Hawkesbury, just north of Sydney Harbour.



Sundari berthed in Newport marina north of Brisbane. It was the first marina we ever used back in 1987 with Corsair while we ventured south to Victoria to earn some cruising cash.



Dennis and the rooftop tent being erected at a campsite at Lake Broadwater near the outback town of Dalby.



Fisherman themed water tank mural in Theodore on the banks of the Dawson River.



Another sign of early summer...jacaranda tree in full bloom.



Grey kangaroo at Lake Murphy.



Emus seen along the Cracow Theodore Road.



Characteristic of the outback...apostle birds, so named because they roam around in family groups of between 10 and 15.



Overview of the North Burnett River, which eventually empties out into the sea at Bundaberg. The orchards are mostly citrus, mandarins and oranges, this shot taken near the small outback town of Gayndah.

Photo shows (most) of the family and friends we saw on our trip to Europe.
Top line: Mary and Susan in Presteigne, with Alison, Polly, John and Adam with the narrow boat, "Badger" in Leeds, John and Geoff at Brincliffe Edge Road in Sheffield.
Line 2: Izzy and Geoff in Sheffield, JP and Meggie in Manchester.
Line 3: Nicolette with Geoff in West Kirby, Belinda and Kit at Plymouth Hoe, Anne and Geoff in Swanage.
Line 4: Prue and Geoff in Bristol, Dave, Mary and the 2 of us in a Potton pub, Toby and two friends in the restaurant in St Jean de Fos.

We are back on the boat in Scarborough marina, just north of Brisbane, after an intense people oriented visit to England and France. It's been 11 to 13 years since we last saw most of the people we visited on this trip face to face. The internet of course means that it is a lot easier to keep in touch than it might have been in the past, but somehow it's not quite the same. Three weeks executing a figure of eight around England was followed by a flying visit to Southern France and bookended by two tiring thirty hour journeys between London and Brisbane via Shanghai. We managed to see four of Alison's sisters (Mary, Polly, Susan and Lucy), a brother (Toby), three nephews (JP, John and Hal), a niece (Izzzy), four brothers in law (Nick, Dave, Mark and John) , two cousins (Prue and Anne) and five friends from our circumnavigating days (Nicolette, Kit and Belinda, Vic and Marge). Phew! That's more socialising than we have done in years!

Apart from seeing friends and family, it was nice to drive around the English countryside, despite the grey, drizzly weather most of the time we were in England. Our rather convoluted route took us first to the Welsh borders, where the Presteigne festival and Knighton carnival were taking place, then to Bangor and Anglesey along the Welsh west coast, where Geoff did his teacher training course.



Wales: Presteigne Festival, Pellith Church, Harlech Castle, Llanfair PG

We picked up Polly at her home in Todmorden and joined her son John and his friend Adam on their newly acquired narrow boat on the canal near Leeds. Polly's other son, Hal, and his partner, Robin, and their two kids also live in Leeds and we dropped in on them for a cup of tea. Next stop was Sheffield to see Geoff's brother in law, John and niece, Isabelle, who is juggling her job and some serious leftwing politics. Geoff's sister, Sue, who came out to Oz last year, was in France when we dropped into Sheffield, but no doubt we will catch up with her again soon, either on bikes in France or on Sundari.



Yorkshire: John and Adam's barge on the canal near Leeds, Pennine landscapes

From Sheffield we tracked back across the Pennines, dropping into Manchester to see Mary's son, JP, and his wife, Meggie, before staying with Nicolette, an old circumnavigating sailing friend, in the Wirral,. Then, south to Bristol where we stayed with Alison's cousin, Prue, who told us that she has regular visits from a badger, a fox and hedgehogs in her Bristol city home. The next week or so was spent in southern England, passing through many quaint villages and towns along what seemed to be huge numbers of narrow country lanes. We spent time around Alison's old family haunts on Dartmoor before staying with more yachtie friends near Plymouth who we sailed with between Turkey and the Caribbean.



Somerset: Watchet marina, Porlock thatched cottage, Bodmin Moor, Wild ponies



Cornwall: Lynmouth harbour, Tintagel Castle, Old stone bridge, robin.



Dartmoor: tor on Dartmoor, Harewood (Alison's old home), Dartmoor Prison, Dartmoor ponies



Devon: tavistock, Francis Drake, Plymouth Harbour, Erme Estuary

More narrow lanes, thatched cottages and centuries old houses passed by before dropping in to see Geoff's cousin, Anne and her husband, John, in the Dorset coastal town of Swanage.



Dorset: Chesil Beach, Corfe Castle, Frome Bridge sign, Poole Harbour



Old houses: in the deep south

A couple of nights in the Bedfordshire village of Potton was next and was followed by the trip down to the south of France to catch up with Alison's youngest sibling, Toby, who is living in a village on the edge of the Massif Central, surrounded by vineyards, where he works. Last, but not least, we stayed with Vic and Marge, old sailing companions we sailed with between Malaysia and Spain. They are two of the very few we know who still have their yacht, Ice Maiden, moored in the Algarve.



Bedfordshire and Essex: Dave's pride and joy - the Morgan, Maldon barges, Rising Sun pub in Potton



Southern France: Herault River at Pont du Diable, St Guilhem alley, Gorge at Pont du Diable, St Jean de Fos alley,

Dennis the diesel (Merc no. 2) was found to be in reasonable shape when we recovered it, and seemingly behaving itself,so we are now getting ready to sail either north (if we get consistent southerlies) or south if the current northerlies persist. It's technically spring here in Queensland, and the days are now quite hot, although the clear skies at night mean that it cools down quite quickly after dark.



The mysterious recovery of Dennis the Diesel, here seen on our most recent 1,600km jaunt west of the Divide in Queensland.

Photo above shows the sunset looking west from Sundari towards the mainland. Clear winter skies mean it gets quite cold as soon as the sun sets!

With three weeks to go before we fly off to Britain on the relly trip we have resigned ourselves to sticking around Moreton Bay while we fix our two fridges and Dennis the Diesel. Dennis (the menace!) has developed an unexplained electronic blip that has limited it intermttently to second gear, something that drives the impatient rat race crowd mad on the busy roads around the Redlands. It's currently in hospital awaiting a transplant.

We've been hooked up to our Karragarra mooring for the last month since we returned from Africa, enduring cold nights and mostly sunny warm days. We have avoided winter chills for years, so it's been a bit of a shock. Meanwhile we have taken the opportunity to plant a variety of trees on our section and contemplated the possibility of erecting some sort of dwelling on it.

Building anything bigger than a shed in Australia means dealing with local council regulations. These seem to be designed to infuriate and obfuscate while delivering as much cash flow as possible to the building industry. While we are still healthy and reasonably fit we are quite happy living on the boat but are cognisant of the fact that this state of affairs may not continue. Meanwhile, what savings we have continue to be devalued by inflation, so we will soon have to take the plunge!



Looking along Lucas Drive on Lamb Island towards the western end of the Karragarra Passage. This drone photo was taken from directly above our section.



Looking east along the Karragarra Passage towards Minjerribah / North Stradbroke Island again from above our section.



Despite the cold winter weather, birds have been very active on the islands. Maybe they think it's Spring? Sulfur crested cockatoos and corellas have been busy searching out gum tree hollows for nests, while noisy miners and kookaburras already have young to feed and rainbow lorikeets squawk in large numbers on flowering blue gums. Also, we have noticed large numbers of pelicans in the surrounding waters which are much clearer (but colder) than normal. This photo shows a sulfur crested cockie having a munch on a Grevillea flower head.



Lamb Island, like the rest of SE Queensland, is looking lush and green after several years without drought.

Photo shows Mount Kilimanjaro, which was clearly visible as we flew into the international airport of the same name in Northern Tanzania.

Tanzania is the third East African country that Alison has now visited, after Uganda and Kenya (in 1980). Tanzania has remained relatively stable and peaceful over the period since Independence, although it remains statistically one of the world's poorest countries. It's another country that Geoff lived in when he was a teenager, when his family was stationed in Dar es Salaam, on the Tanzanian coast, nearly opposite the island of Zanzibar.

We had a fantastic Air Tanzania flight between Entebbe and Kilimanjaro International Airport, located half way between the northern cities of Arusha and Moshi. There was an unusually clear sky and we were treated to a good view of Lake Victoria and its islands as well as the volcanic landmarks of Oldonyo Lengai and Ngorongoro Crater as well as Lakes Natron , Manyara and Eyasi. As we neared the end of the flight, huge Mount Meru on the doorsteps of Arusha reared up and behind that, further in the distance, was Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest. Maybe because the recently ended wet season had been particularly wet, Kilimanjaro seemed to have more snow on top than was expected.

Like Kampala, Arusha, our base city in Tanzania, had grown enormously since Geoff was last here in early 1971. We had hired a Toyota Landcruiser, a tougher 4 x 4 to tackle the notoriously atrocious roads in Tanzania's northern parks. This area has a lot of wildlife reserves and attracts more overseas visitors than just about anywhere else in Africa, so our Landcruiser was just one of many trundling along the highway south west of Arusha and into the national parks not so far away.

Our target areas were Tarangire NP, the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area, Serengeti NP and Lake Manyara NP. In the end, we substituted Arusha NP, only 25 km from Arusha instead of Lake Manyara. All the parks we visited were superb wildlife areas and we were lucky to be in the middle part of Serengeti close to the park's HQ of Seronera just as the main bulk of the wildebeest/ zebra migration was passing through. (Apparently, a previously underestimated migration of antelope in war torn South Sudan has now been recognised as even greater than that of the greater Serengeti ecosystem, with up to 6 million hoofed animals making a 2,000 km round journey in the region of the Upper White Nile - great news!)

Tarangire NP was only opened up after Geoff lived in Tanzania and is best known for its elephant herds which congregate near to the Tarangire River in the dry season, but the first animals we saw in the park were 4 lionesses, sleeping peacefully in a tree close to the entrance gate!

Ngorongoro has a descent road and a separate ascent road into the crater, 600 m below the crater rim. Thankfully, they have both been paved, as the roads leading to and from the crater rim, as well as the roads on the floor of the crater, are not in good condition. Just as Geoff remembered, Ngorongoro seemed to be like a Garden of Eden, with animals of all descriptions everywhere. One feels that the zebras and gnus that live on the crater floor as well as the many gazelles, buffalo, hippos and elephants are lucky compared to their relatives in the Serengeti who have to be constantly on the move looking for food. We were lucky to see a black rhino in Ngorongoro. Rhinos have been slaughtered mercilessly over the last two or three decades and nowhere in Africa has been spared. The fight against corrupt government officials, well organised wildlife smuggling syndicates, poachers and markets in Yemen, Vietnam and China seems to have paid off somewhat more recently as the numbers of black rhinos seem to be now increasing. White rhino populations, for decades much more numerous than their browsing black rhino cousins, have not done so well and South Africa, in particular, is having a hard time trying to staunch the loss, even though many of their rhinos have had their horns cut off to dissuade poaching.

Driving around the Serengeti was hard work, because of the bone numbing roads and dust, but we were rewarded by the numbers and diversity of wildlife we saw. We camped in unfenced public campgrounds in both the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater rim and were kept awake at night by a cacophony of sounds coming from hyenas, lions, baboons, frogs and the constant grunting of migrating wildebeest, who seemed to have picked our Seronera campsite as a through route!

Our last stop in our too brief trip in Tanzania was little Arusha National Park, wedged between Mount Meru and the banana and coffee plantations all around. This park was surprisingly good value with plenty of megafauna, including large number of giraffes, zebras, waterbucks and other antelopes, herds of elephants and three species of monkeys on the slopes of Ngurdoto Crater, a smaller version of Ngorongoro, accessed by a horrendously narrow and dangerously slippery road!

Thanks to all the friendly and interesting people we met in the three countries we visited. You tend to miss some of the potentially good contact with locals you can get when you go on an organised tour or with a driver/guide combination, but we still managed to talk to a lot of South Africans, Ugandans and Tanzanians on our self drives. Thanks go to our rafiki, John, for example, in Arusha, who took us on an impromptu tour of Arusha's sprawling and fascinating central market where we saw all sorts of vegetables and fruit we had never seen before and in such large anounts as well as a lot of colourful market characters. Geoff once was able to get along happily in Kiswahili, Tanzania's official language and a lingua franca across East Africa, but what little he could remember (Jambo, Mama!) endeared him, or at least caused amusement, to locals everywhere!

We now have a couple of months cruising in Sundari before we fly off again to Europe to catch up with family and friends we haven't seen for years. Flying has become a bore and a drag, but we haven't done much of it for years until this year, so endure it we must.



Predators in Serengeti and Ngorongoro.
Top row: lionesses of the Seronera pride
Middle row: Male lion of the Seronera pride, cheetah seen on the plains on the way to Ngorongoro
Bottom row: Serengeti spotted hyena, young croc in the Seronera River.



Other megafauna in Tanzania
Top row: Serengeti wildebeest migratiom, Ngorongoro zebra, Serengeti dik dik
Middle row: Ngorongoro plains wildlife, Ngorongoro elephant, Ngorongoro hippo
Bottom row: Grants gazelle on the Serengeti Plains, Ostrich, Crowned crane in Ngorongoro.



Snapshot of Northern Tanzania
Top row: Olduvai Gorge entrance, Maasai village on the way out of Ngorongoro
Middle row: Views into Ngorongoro Crater
Bottom row: Seronera campsite at dawn.

This chimp was spotted just off the main highway in the Kalinzu Forest. it was a young male, called "Son of Kahala" and part of a 52 strong habituated chimpanzee group in this forest.

Alison had never been to Uganda and for Geoff, it was 53 years since he and his family left Entebbe on a paddle steamer across Lake Victoria, heading for the Kenyan lakeside town of Kisumu and then to Mombasa on the coast.

What would it be like after all that time? Perhaps coincidentally we arrived at Entebbe from Johannesburg on a sunny morning, the international airport located right on the shore of the huge East Afican lake, Africa's largest. Entebbe and other Ugandan cities we were to discover had grown enormously since Geoff was living here. Uganda's population has grown at least 4 times over since the early 1970s and it shows in the crowded streets of Entebbe and Kampala through to the villages on the verdant, rolling hillsides as far as the eye can see.

We hired a tougher vehicle in Entebbe from a local dealer to deal with the rougher roads and it proved a good choice. We planned a circuitous trip first west from Kampala towards the Ruwenzori Mountains on the Congo border and the tea plantations of Fort Portal. We stopped off at a small crater reserve, Nkuruba, one of many explosion craters close to the Western Rift Valley volcanic zone before descending to Uganda's second largest national park, Queen Elizabeth, and one that Geoff knew well from spending 2 months here before he went to University in Britain.

Uganda has had a fairly tumultuous time politically since it became independent. Instability through the rules of Idi Amin and Milton Obote was later compounded by refugee chaos from across the border in Rwanda during the genocide period there and the even more politically unstable Congo. The last decade has been relatively peaceful and we felt genuinely safe everywhere we went in Uganda.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has done a lot of good work on primate conservation and a lot of the not very many tourists we saw in Uganda were focused on seeing chimpanzees, gorillas and other unique primates. We passed on the gorilla possibilities (too expensive for our stretched budget), but we did spend a memorable morning in Kalinzu Forest, a large primary rainforest reserve that is joined to the even larger Maramagambo Forest in Queen Elizabeth national park. Following protocols elsewhere in Africa where there are still great ape populations (Tanzania, Rwanda, the Congo and Gabon), small family groups of both gorillas and chimps have been carefully habituated and visitors under controlled conditions are now allowed to get a close up experience. The chimps and gorillas are often as curious as the humans in these encounters, although the possibility of an encounter is not guaranteed, as the families of apes wander around according to fruiting trees (chimps) or ground level vegetation (gorillas). The Kalinzu forest chimp population is estimated to be around 500, with 52 in one extended family group habituated. The Kibale Forest National park chimp population is a lot larger at around 3,000, while gorilla populations are at the moment holding on relatively healthily in the Impenetrable Forest and the three volcanos on or near the Rwandan and Congolese borders. In addition to chimps, we saw red and black and white colobus monkeys, L'Hoest's monkeys, red tailed monkeys, vervets and baboons.

Queen Elizabeth NP had suffered greatly in the past, especially when the attempt to kick Idi Amin out was in full force, with Tanzanian and rebel Ugandan troops using the park as a base for a while. The park seems to have recovered with good populations of all the usual megafauna. Elephant herds and lone males were seen everywhere, even holding up the traffic on the main highway that runs through the park. The Kazinga Channel that links Lakes George and Edward in Queen Elizabeth was brimming with birds, hippos and crocodiles as well as attendant antelopes and warthogs.

The last reserve we visited didn't exist when Geoff lived there - Lake Mburo National Park is a relatively small park in the savannah lands of the Ankole cattle herders. It's become a popular place for bikers and hikers as there are no really dangerous animals (lions have apparently recently wandered over from Rwanda, but are rare or non-existent most of the time). It must be quite a magical experience to walk or cycle (with an armed guard of course) close to the herds of zebras, waterbuck and giraffes.

Geoff tried to find the grave of his Mum who died in Kampala in 1970. The graveyard has narrowly escaped development and upheaval and is a rare green oasis in an ocean of rapidly expanding urban development. Sadly, the actual gravestone couldn't be found. Whether it had actually been put in place back in 1970 will never be discovered.



Sample of birds we encountered in Uganda.

Top row: African Fish Eagles, Bee eaters,
Middle row: Turaco in the Nkuruba rainforest, Little Kingfisher at QENP.
Bottom row: Pied kingfishers along the Kazinga Channel, Crowned crane.


Top row: Black and white colobus monkeys
Middle row: Red colobus monkeys,
Bottom row: Chimpanzees in Kalinzu Forest.

Some of the 7 species of primates we saw in Uganda.



There was a huge diversity of other megafauna in Uganda.
Top row: elephant herd along the Kazinga Channel, zebras at Lake Mburo NP
Middle row: banded mongooses at Nkuruba, elephants feeding on papyrus,
Bottom row: bushbuck, hippos and little egret along the Kazinga Channel.



A snapshot of human Uganda.
Top row: Kampala roundabout, Kalinzu Forest staff
Middle row: Pineapples on the way to market along the Mbarara Kampala highway, tea plantations near Fort Portal.
Bottom row: Warning sign in the Kibale National Park on the main highway, Ankole cattle near Lake Mburo NP.

Photo shows the iconic Table Mountain in sunny conditions from the city waterfront on Table Bay. It was the only time we saw the top of the mountain during our Cape Town visit.

We are back on Sundari in the Gold Coast's Broadwater after a too short trip to South and East Africa. The reason that the trip was so short was because we expected to be called up for a citizenship ceremony at some point. Our expectation was proven correct when we got an email in South Africa announcing the ceremony taking place in Cleveland, the Redland City Council's main administrative town. We are now Australian citizens and were given two small native trees at the ceremony to plant in our land on Lamb Island as a souvenir!

In the end we spent a very enjoyable 3 weeks in South Africa and 1 week each in Uganda and Tanzania.

Could we have spent longer? Of course, but the sort of trip we did in each country certainly wasn't cheap, especially as we opted to stay in guest houses and hotels where we could, rather than cheaper campsites as we have done so frequently in the past. East Africa is particularly expensive and we would have spent a lot more if we had been there any longer.

The main aim of our trip was of course to see as much of Africa's mega fauna as we could, while keeping an eye and mind open to what's happening more broadly, socially and politically, in the countries we visited.

We were able to shorten the time in the air on the way to Cape Town by spending two nights in Perth on the way from Brisbane, where we caught up with Alison's old school friend and fellow sailor, Clodagh, who met us half way between Albany and Perth in the little village of Williams (!) We still felt tired and jet lagged by the time we landed in Cape Town.

Cape Town was inspiringly beautiful with its grand mountainous backdrop and seascape. We weren't to see the full grandeur of Table Mountain until the second afternoon when we made the obligatory pilgrimage by ferry to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela spent his Apartheid era internment years. We enjoyed the road journey below the towering cliffs and the precipitous peaks of the Cape Range to the Cape of Good Hope, spotting eland, bontebok, zebra, ostrich and a lot of baboons along the way as well as dropping in on the sadly vanishing colonies of African penguins.

From Cape Town we stuck to the main coastal route, deviating from the well maintained N2 highway whenever we could. We drove through the Overberg, the little quaint Afrikaaner town of Swellendam, the Bontebok National park and onto the Garden Route. This is an impressively beautiful coast with some of South Africa's best hiking possibilities in the coastal mountains and forests close to the crashing southern ocean swells.

We had a 2 day stopover at Addo Elephant National park near Port Elizabeth which was our first real encounter with significant megafauna, especially large numbers of very friendly elephants (!) before continuing our coastal adventure through the Eastern Cape towards KwaZulu Natal and Durban.

Our last week and a half was divided up between the lovely St Lucia Estuary and iSimangaliso Reserve, Hluhluwe / iMfolozi Game Reserves and Kruger national park. It probably wasn't the ideal time of the year to visit these well known reserves as the wet season had not long finished and the grass was quite long, making it more difficult to spot animal life much beyond the fringes of the roads. We still saw heaps of megafauna, however, and it was difficult to say whether this was any less of a trip than the one we did in 2012, when we visited the same three places (plus a few more we didn't have time for this time).

As for South Africa and its inhabitants, at no time did we feel unsafe, although because the country has a reputation for petty and sometimes violent crime, we did take precautions. Everyone we met was friendly and pleasant, whatever their background. SA has huge socio-economic problems and the gap between rich and poor here is still staggering. The general election took place just after we left for Uganda and there was a lot of intense debate within SA on the TV and radio about which parties could be trusted to do something about the poverty in the country. The ANC in the end lost majority control after 30 years in power and has now decided to stay in government in coalition with 5 other smaller parties. We wish SA the very best in its endeavours to become a better place for all of its people to live in.



A snapshot of scenes across SA.
Top row: Mandela's Robben Island cell, Cape Point, Cape of Good Hope
Middle row: Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, Cape Range, Fish River mouth
Bottom row: eastern cape Xhosa country, East London beach scene, Umthatha, main town in Eastern Cape and Mandela's birth place.



Just some of the many birds we saw in South Africa, some close relatives of birds in Australia.

Top row: African penguins, darter, Goliath Heron
Middle row: Giant ground hornbill, Giant kingfisher, bee eater
Bottom row: Helmeted guinea fowl, Mouse birds, Verreaux's eagle owl.



The so called Big 5 together with hippos - our Big 6!
Top row: Kruger lioness, Kruger leopard, Addo NP elephants
Middle row: iMfolozi rhino, St Lucia hippos, Kruger rhino
Bottom row: Sabie elephants, Kruger hippo, Kruger buffalo



The not so Big 6 animals encountered in SA.
Top row: Croc and heron, greater kudu and inyala, Kruger giraffe
Middle row: Baboons, Samango monkey, Giraffes and zebras, Addo.
Bottom row: Tree squirrel, meerkat, wildebeest/gnu.

Photo shows a lone male elephant on a road in Kruger National Park we encountered in October 2012. We weren't sure at the time what the intentions of the elephant were!


It seems hard to register that we have now been in Australia for nearly six whole years, with only 2 relatively short side trips to New Zealand, just across the turbulent ditch. This long period has of course been partly extended by Covid rules and maybe the very size of Australia has meant that we have been kept busy exploring new places whenever we could.

Now we are flying away, with Sundari safely tucked away in Hope Harbour, while we pass through Perth en route to Cape Town. We are hiring a car to drive east along the Garden Route and the Wild Coast as far as KwaZulu Natal, then north past Eswatini / Swaziland and into Kruger and then off to Johannesburg.



Anchored in the Broadwater for the next few days before flying off to Africa!

From there we will fly up to Entebbe in Uganda on the north coast of Lake Victoria, and visit the area south west of Uganda's capital, Kampala to look for chimps in their last remaining forest habitats amongst other Ugandan wildlife refuges. Finally, our African odyssey will take us to the city of Arusha near Mount Kilimanjaro and we will hire a 4 x 4 to take us to Tarangire national park, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti. We should be back in Brisbane ready to sail north in mid June after a short stopover in Kuala Lumpur.

It's not the first time we have been in Africa, of course. We were last in South Africa in 2012 when we spent five weeks in the eastern half of Africa's most developed country. We sailed up through the Red Sea in 2010, visiting Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt, while in 2013, we spent time in Morocco and Cape Verde, off the West African coast. And on our long trip from New Zealand to Britain in 1979 we spent several weeks in Kenya, hitch hiking around the country and dropping into Mombasa on the coast where my (Geoff's) Dad was working.

Years before that, I lived in East Africa for five years with my family. My time there as a developing teenager, living in two equally developing young African nations, only just emerging from the shadow of colonial rule, was probably the most influential of my life.

It was where my life-long hatred of racism originated and an awareness of glaring socio-economic inequities. It was also where I discovered just how amazing the world of nature was, with the rich experiences of bountiful birdlife, amazing underwater coral ecosystems and mammalian megafauna.

It was where my mother died and was buried in a now overgrown cemetery on the outskirts of burgeoning and bustling Kampala. It was also where I learned to drive, and where I had my first taste of a job, albeit a volunteer one, on the border with the Congo in Queen Elizabeth National Park, working with and amongst that magic park's elephants, hippos, buffalo, lions and hyenas.

We don't expect to see an Africa unchanged. Nowhere else in the world has stayed the same. Africa generally remains near the bottom of the global statistical heap in terms of life expectancy, access to clean water, adequate housing and food supply. The continent is huge, of course, and diverse, and we will have too little time to make any meaningful analysis of what lies ahead for Africa's human population as well as what remains of African nature.

Climate change is just as important a challenge for Africa as it is here so far away in Australia. Only in the last few weeks, detailed aerial and underwater observations have revealed yet another depressing coral bleaching event, this time stretching well into the southern reefs. If wealthy Australia can't do enough to look after its natural marvels, and do its share in reducing emissions, who can blame poverty stricken African governments for not doing enough?



Route in South Africa from Cape Town to Johannesburg



Route in East Africa from Entebbe in Uganda to Arusha in Tanzania

* "Tunasafiri Kwa Africa" - Kiswahili for "We are off to Africa". Kiswahili is a lingua franca language across East Africa, especially Tanzania, where it is the national language, and Kenya. It is actually the native language of the Waswahili, the people of the east coast opposite Unguja / Zanzibar. Kiswahili is not so common in Uganda and not spoken in South Africa where Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, Zulu and other African languages are the official languages.

Photo shows the daily fish feeding frenzy outside a fish and chip restaurant on the Broadwater. Pelicans and silver gulls are there for easy pickings and tourists come to goggle at them.

We are back on the boat in Hope Harbour marina on the Gold Coast after a few weeks pottering around up and down the east coast of New South Wales and Queensland. Our trip south towards Sydney was cut short when it became obvious that we had lost a good weather window and would be locked into the barred Clarence River for rather too long if we had left the Gold Coast when we could.

Not shy of opting for Plan B, we tied Sundari up in Hope Harbour and set off in Matilda, loaded up with kayaks, bikes, camping and hiking gear.



The Merc. loaded up with kayaks, bikes and camping stuff

We have passed through New South Wales plenty of times, but hardly ever explored what it has to offer naturally.

The NSW coastline is beautiful, but an awkward place for cruising, mainly because potential anchorages are mostly on offer only after navigating a river bar. In summer, the often constant easterly ocean swell can make many of these river entrances treacherous. When the swell is down, a few rivers are navigable to a deep drafted yacht like Sundari, but the entrance has to be precisely timed for a safe entrance. Once in, the rivers provide good anchorage, but you are then locked in until the bar opens again!



A few of many beautiful beaches and coastal scenes on the NSW coast


We are not new to bar crossings. We have crossed the often dangerous Wide Bay bar at the southern end of K'Gari many times, and have crossed into the Richmond and Clarence rivers in Saraoni. The most dangerous bar we tried to cross was the Vailala on the Papuan coast. We attempted this bar in Corsair with no beacons or navigational guidance back in 1989 and nearly drowned. The unsuccessful attempt meant we had to beat back against the trade wind for 150 nm to Port Moresby where we left the boat on a mooring and flew to the little jungle school of Ihu. The headmaster had been led to believe that we had disappeared and our boat sunk after we had been sighted trying to cross the bar by local fishermen!

Our wanderings took us on to the New England tableland, past gorges and escarpments down to the coast near Sydney. From Lake Macquarie, we explored each inlet in turn, travelling northwards past the Hunter, Port Stephens and the Myall Lakes, Forster/Tuncurry, the Manning River, Camden Haven, Port Macquarie, the Macleay, Nambucca Heads, Coffs Harbour, Sandon, the Clarence and Richmond Rivers.

Lovely, long stretches of sandy beaches between bush covered headlands and calm inlets punctuate the coast north of Sydney, but civilization in the form of condos, beach mansions and associated urban development is taking over in many places where the river mouths meet the sea. Weekends and public or school holidays close to any large city are times to avoid!

The weather was really too hot to enjoy too much strenuous outdoor activity but we walked where we could and kayaked in some lovely inlets. To beat the heat, we have just spent time up in the Border Ranges on the Queensland side, the Sunshine Coast hinterland and the upper reaches of the Mary River.



The hinterland of both the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast still have pockets of sub tropical rainforest and quite a few reservoirs turned into recreation resources.



As usual, we are always on the lookout for amazing wildlife opportunities.

If it hadn't been for a lengthy wait for our Australian citizenship applications to be approved, we would have made plans to leave Sundari on the east coast and make a trip to Europe (last time we were there was 2013!) and Africa (not sure whether that was going to be Entebbe in Uganda or Cape Town). Plans are somewhat hazy as the applications have only just been approved, but we don't actually become citizens until we attend a citizenship ceremony, the date of which is unknown!

It is now the first days of Autumn here and we have to make a choice whether to stay put, sail south, or sail north and leave the boat in Bundaberg or Gladstone when we can fly off for the two months away from Australia.



Finding places to kayak while we limbo dance!

Photo shows Sundari on its mooring between Karragarra and Lamb islands in the Karragarra Channel. Karragarra Island is in the background. This is Quandamooka Country - the Aboriginal name for Moreton Bay.

We seem to have been having a longer than usual stopover in the Karragarra Channel. We should have been sailing south along the New South Wales coast right now with a possible deviation to Lord Howe Island, but horrendous weather in South East Queensland (and North eastern NSW) has postponed movement away from the security of our mooring!

We're not sure what has happened to El Nino. Very severe thunderstorms and heavy rain for days at a time, with days in between baking in the upper thirties, have not quite fitted the usual El Nino pattern - more like a repeat of the last three years of La Nina. Climate scientists seem to be as flummoxed as us and are blaming 'unusually' (!) warm ocean water surrounding Australia on the amount of moisture in the air descending upon us.

Around a dozen people have died in one weather related accident or another since just before Christmas, three who fell overboard off a launch in 70 knots of wind a few miles north of us in Moreton Bay.

Heigh Ho, we have been dealing with a few maintenance issues on the boat, done the usual shuffling of stuff to and from the 'Boat Shed', swam off the back of the boat, or the beach at Karragarra or Lamb when it's been too hot, watching the daily sparring match between the local sea eagles and their tiny avian tormentors and sorting out documentation now needed for our Oz citizenship applications.

We still haven't recovered Matilda, patiently hanging around back up in Bundaberg, but will be going up to collect it next week, depositing it by the Boat Shed and departing southwards to resume our southern quest via the Gold Coast.



We now have 8 bikes in the shed and 1 more in the car up in Bundy. We need a new shed or need to get rid of some of this junk or all of the above!



In between the wet and stormy weather, it's been baking, so we have been in the sea as much as we can. The little beaches scattered around these populated islands have BBQ facilities, public loos and freshwater showers, which are actually more refreshing than the sea. This pic shows Karragarra in the foreground and Lamb to the North, with North Stradbroke (Minjerribah) in the far distance.



The scattering of moored boats in the Karragarra Channel. Macleay Island is the nearest island seen at the back left. Lamb is further to the right, separated from Macleay by the Lucas Passage. In the hazier distance is the long hummocky island of North Stradbroke, most of which is Naree Budjong Djara National Park. Most of North Stradbroke and Moreton Islands have been handed back to the remaining Quandamooka people. The Karragarra Channel is a well trafficked marine thouroughfare that is used by boats transiting between Moreton Bay to the north and the Gold Coast's Broadwater 25 miles away to the South.



This drone photo shows Russell Island, the fourth of this tightly knit quartet of inhabited SMB islands, in the distance, with the Krummel Passage separating it from Karragarra in the foreground. While Karragarra is the smallest island in area and population, Russell is the largest of the four islands with the most residents and land area.



This photo shows the mainland in the far distance, with a number of low lying mangrove islands scattered between the Redland Bay coast and Karragarra in the foreground.

Note the rather ungainly structure in the photo on Karragarra. Each of the four South Moreton Bay islands now sports a new ferry terminal for the frequent fast ferries which skim across the water between Redland Bay and the islands. The council has also built new dinghy docks and pontoons for larger boats at each island,which has made it a lot easier to get ashore and safely leave your dinghy as well as take Sundari alongside and fill up with water!

Photo shows Sundari anchored off the River Heads boat ramp at the mouth of the Mary.

We are anchored at the mouth of the Mary River, half way down the Great Sandy Strait, after a long 60nm sail down from Bundaberg's Burnett River. It was probably the best sail we have had this year, with consistent 10 to 20 knot north easterlies.

We have been in the Burnett for most of the time since our arrival from Mackay at least a month ago. Time has drifted by in the Burnett, as we have been hoping for a side trip up to Lady Musgrave lagoon. Sadly, this wasn't to be and we had Sundari hauled out for a bottom antifoul instead while we made inland trips to the Bunya Mountains and the Cooloola Coast.



Sundari anchored in its favourite calm spot in the lower reaches of the Burnett River.



Sundari getting its hull scrubbed and painted with new antifouling paint.

While we were perched up on Bundy Port marina's hard stand, a low developed for the third time this year in the Solomons. Unlike Cyclones Lola and Mal, which both tracked south and then south east, the new system moved into the Coral Sea and long range forecasts predicted a possible path right across Bundaberg and K'Gari. The new cyclone, named Jasper, was the first December cyclone to develop in the Coral Sea in an El Nino year since records began - how often have we have been hearing these records being broken lately?

After a rather agonising long 10 day wait, especially for Far North Queensland boaties and land based residents, the cyclone eventually crossed the coast just north of Cape Tribulation nearly a week ago as a category 2 system. While the wind and wave damage wasn't too bad (apart from to coral reef and seagrass beds), torrential rain falling from the stalled system led to the worst flooding to hit the area since (guess what) records began. Jasper crossed the coast at the Aboriginal community of Wujal Wujal, all 300 inhabitants being eventually evacuated to Cooktown, mainly because of floods inundating their homes.



The tracking map published by the BOM showing Jasper's track across the Coral Sea.

At this time of the year, inland troughs tend to create northerlies ahead of them and late afternoon or evening thunderstorms on the coast. These can be very strong - a storm in the outskirts of Brisbane yesterday reached 80 knots! We are keeping a close eye on the radar when the northerlies are blowing as when the storm comes through it typically reverses the wind direction 180 degrees making sheltered anchorages a lee shore!



A line of thunderstorms shown on the BOM radar approaching the Sandy Strait and K'Gari this afternoon as this blog was written.

These same northerlies that brought us down to the Sandy Strait ease on Sunday, so we should be able to cross the shallows at Sheridan Flats and the Wide Bay Bar on Monday or Tuesday, in transit to Moreton Bay and our mooring off Lamb Island.

We still have to retrieve Matilda, left in Bundaberg, and help our Bundy friends with fitting a new anchor winch on their yacht "Kindred Spirit" but we are unlikely to stay in Moreton Bay for too long - it's just too hot here in summer! We will sail as far south as we can get to, weather permitting, while we are still waiting for our Oz citizenship applications to be completed. Hopefully, it won't be much longer, so we will be then planning on doing something more energetic and away from Australia next year.

It seems to have been a long year and probably, for many people in currently war torn parts of the planet, far too long. In many cases there seems to be no prospect of much improvement any time soon. Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia/Tigre are all sad places at the end of 2023. Simmering violence persists in Haiti, the Maghreb (West Africa), the drug wars of Mexico and too many other places to mention. Climate change is not yet being addressed sufficiently by the world's governments and the rise of the far right and right adjacent makes for a gloomy vision for 2024. This is possibly the first time for many years that wishing everyone a Happy Christmas and New Year without any evidence that it will be so for many seems a trifle banal. Wishing family and friends both, of course, is another matter!

We have bought ourselves a joint Christmas present - a larger version of one of our 2 kayaks. The U.S. designed and manufactured Advanced Elements single kayak that we bought in 2019 with the French Itiwit is a bit rough around the edges but is still usable. The new kayak is the one up from the Advanced Elements kayak that we already have - it was sold second hand but in very good condition. It's capable of carrying more than the single kayak, so we will hopefully be using it for some multi day kayak adventures next year. We will also be planning at least one long hiking trip and one long bike trip - preferably not in Australia!



Geoff unpacks the new kayak and tries it out for size on the Burnett Heads foreshore.



Trial run in the new kayak up the Kolan River near the Bucca Crossing.



The 2 kayaks together on a sand bank in the Elliott River.

Update: We are now anchored off Tangalooma, Moreton Island, after another fantastic 90 nm sail down from the Wide Bay Bar. Very calm and sunny here with dolphins and turtles in attendance and a large number of 4WDs on the sandy beach.

Photo shows a drone view of Port Newry, near Mackay, just one of 15 lovely island anchorages we stopped at on the way from Cairns to Mackay. Sundari is in the near foreground.

We have arrived back on the shores of Great Keppel Island, 5 months and many hundreds of sea miles since we were here last on the trip north. A decision to sail overnight from Mackay, our last stopping off point, was soon curtailed after passing a southbound whale, one of the very last of this year's stragglers. We passed another two this morning, a mum and a calf, the latter probably a late birther. The wind has been from the north to north east, but the only decent sailing day was today, close to the coast south of Port Clinton.



Had a lovely sail today (for a change!) from Port Clinton into the Keppel Group, with its fantastic beaches and harsh, dry hills.

Geoff's sister, Sue, accompanied us for nearly two months, as we sailed south in three steps from Cairns through to Mackay, a total distance logged of around 550 nautical miles. Sue's now back in France, plotting her next adventures.



The three of us splashing around in a pool at the 'Rock Slides', in the Paluma Range, near Townsville.

We last met up with Sue in Panama when we crossed over from the Caribbean to the Pacific through the Panama Canal. Sue's work, Covid and distance have been a deterrent to meeting up in the last 8 years. Sue has recently retired from a busy life in charge of a Sheffield not for profit company, and is making the transition to life without having to worry about her job.

Having both Matilda, the Merc. to waltz around in and the boat available proved to be a good combination as it meant that Sue got to see quite a lot of Australia in the time she was here, especially as it was the first time she had been to the country before.

We stayed based in Cairns for the first three weeks, mainly because the trades were still strong and would have made south bound sailing too tough. We still got around the hinterland, revisiting the Daintree rainforest, Atherton Tableland, Cassowary Coast and inland on the Savannah Way as far as the Undara lava tubes and Georgetown, in addition to a four day sprint out to the outer barrier reef.



Sundari perched just off the reef at Sudbury Cay on the outer barrier.




Underwater/Overwater at Sudbury Cay



Campsite at Undara lava tubes. Sue slept in the car and we opted for the tent.

The trip south, once the wind eased, was first down to Townsville, stopping at Fitzroy Island, the Franklands, Mourilyan Harbour, Orpheus in the Palms and Magnetic Island. The second leg took us past Cape Bowling Green, Cape Upstart, Gloucester Island to the Whitsundays, while the last leg to Mackay took us to Shaw Island, Thomas, the Newrys and St Bees and Keswick Islands.



Sundari at Normanby Island in the Frankland Group.




Shoal of friendly trevally at Normanby island.



Sundari at Saddleback Island,with Gloucester Island in the background.



Bauer Bay at South Molle in the Whitsundays.

Sue was able to spot some of Oz's iconic wildlife, including wallabies (on the first day out!), kangaroos, koalas (on Magnetic Island), crocodiles, goannas, turtles and 2 rather distant humpback whales. She unexpectedly eyeballed a cassowary in the Daintree and an emu in the outback. She saw more species of birds and fish than she will ever remember, plenty of both botanical and geological interest, swam, kayaked, snorkelled, beachcombed, walked and climbed, hopefully a holiday to remember!



Sleepy koala in a pine tree near the Forts, Magnetic Island.



Sue enjoying her time in Oz

We haven't made plans for the next few months yet and will take each week as it comes. We still have the Bunker Group's cays and reefs at the southern end of the Barrier Reef to get to in what is now warmer weather than when we sailed north, so hopefully we can now do some diving!

The cyclone season seems to have started unusually early with the formation of Cyclone Lola in the southern Solomons a couple of days ago. Like all cyclones, it's hard to know where they will wander. Lola is now rated at category 5, the strongest level, and is expected to move across Vanuatu towards New Caledonia before fizzling out. It's not going to affect us in any way, except remind us that it's not the time of year to hang around for too long in the tropics!

Photo shows one of the typical crocodile warning signs now seen everywhere near large estuaries and the coast in Northern Australia. This one was located by a lovely section of the North Kennedy River in Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park.

From Gladstone on Queensland's Central coast right round northern Australia to Broome in Western Australia there are warning signs in English, German and Chinese about the potential danger of saltwater crocodiles. The crocodile recovery story has paralleled that of the baleen whales. Once almost hunted to extinction, strict bans on hunting in the 1970s of both the smaller freshwater crocs and their larger more dangerous saltwater relatives has led to a remarkable resurgence in numbers. There is the occasional injury or death from crocs in the three northern states, but generally crocs keep to their preferred habitat and the incidents usually happen when locals or tourists get careless.





Large saltwater crocodile sunning itself on the banks of the North Kennedy River in Rinyirru National Park.

We got used to crocs when we were teaching in the Northern Territory in the late 1990s and 2000s, especially so because we were living amongst them on Saraoni and using a dinghy to get to and from the shore! In Darwin, each creek had a large baited (with chickens) metal cage to trap the crocs which would venture from time to time into the harbour from elsewhere. The trapped crocs would then be transported to a crocodile farm. The thousands of crocs living elsewhere were left to live a normal life. It did put a damper on swimming from a mainland beach (potentially suicidal), and this has now become the norm in most of northern Queensland, although crocs rarely bother to visit the offshore islands. Freshwater crocs live in many of the inland rivers, but aren't really a danger unless they are cornered.

We have just returned from a trip up into the Cape York Peninsula, which has large areas still in wilderness. Much of the peninsula is hard to access without a 4 wheel drive vehicle or light plane, so we contented ourselves with exploring the southern half of the huge Lakefield National Park, now renamed Rinyirru, the Aboriginal name, about 350 km north of Cairns and lying in a sunnier, drier area, in the rain shadow of the coastal mountains. Rinyirru is criss-crossed by several large river systems and their associated overflow billabongs and wetlands. Of course, there are plenty of crocs here, but they are not always easy to see unless they have hauled out on to the banks to get warm in the sun. Termite mounds, agile wallabies and birds in large numbers were everywhere, very typical of a Northern Australian savannah woodland environment. We did venture down several narrow, bumpy, sandy 4 wheel drive tracks to camp by water lily covered lagoons, but really need a more suitable vehicle if we want to do any more of this sort of exploration.



Magnetic termite mound in Rinyirru National Park. Termites are the main herbivores in Northern Australia and their biomass far exceeds wallabies or other grazers.



Agile wallabies replace kangaroos as the main grazing mammals in Northern Australia. Unfortunately, too many get killed on the roads when they are attracted to green, nutritious grass growing on the verges.



One of Rinyirru's many rivers snaking across the flat lowlands of this national park. This drone photo was taken at Catfish lagoon near where we saw several large crocs. They didn't seem to be bothered by the drone hovering near them, but took off when they heard a 4 wheel drive vehicle turn up!



A water lily covered billabong (Keatings Lagoon) near Cooktown.



Despite August being in the middle of the dry season, many of Cape York's rivers are still flowing after 3 wet La Niña years. This is the lovely Palmer River on the way up to Laura on the Peninsula Development Road.



Birds of many species on the Cape York Peninsula trip.

From top left: galahs at Laura, Great Bower bird
rainbow bee-eater, whistling kite, galah
Intermediate egret, oriole.

The constant strong winds and rain in Cairns are about to subside in the next few days, which will be a blessing as we can then get out to the reefs again. Not sure how long the calmer weather will last, although normally September is the start of better (for sailing) weather here. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has yet to declare an El Niño in the Pacific, despite the U.N. having declared one having begun. This is apparently because the BOM says that the trade winds are still too strong - in a normal El Niño, the skies are clearer and the trades are reduced or reversed, something which would suit us down to the ground! In any case, even climate scientists don't really know any more what is normal and what has been modified by climate change. The oceans are definitely warmer than ever and this may have influenced the amount of (supposedly) dry season rain we have had the last few weeks.

Photo above shows the tail of a humpback whale that surfaced just behind Sundari this morning. We are in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef's whale season.

"Where the rainforest meets the reef" is one of those rather corny phrases used by the North Queensland tourist industry to promote their 'products'. It is almost correct, though, as there are pockets of coastal rainforest left standing between the Bloomfield River and Cardwell, although most of the rainforest that survived the settlers' axes are up on the higher or steeper parts of the Great Divide.

Where the rainforest is still in existence on the coast - around Mission Beach and the Daintree, it meets the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, not the reef, which is further offshore. Admittedly, the outer barrier reef is closer in the Cairns region than further south. To the North of Cairns, the barrier closes in an almost unbroken line (the Ribbon reefs) and there are hundreds of patch reefs to navigate between in the lagoon, as we know from traversing the area several times.



The rainforest, pictured here on the Daintree coast, meets the Great Barrier Reef lagoon north of Port Douglas.



The reef - here pictured by our drone at Green Island, is only 12 miles out from Cairns. That's Sundari, by the way, anchored all on its own right down there!

The whales, humpbacks anyway, have certainly reached this part of the lagoon on their winter vacation from Antarctica. We have seen quite a few on our latest trip out to the reef. One even surfaced just behind Sundari while getting ready to up anchor off Michaelmas Cay this morning!



Typical view of a humpback whale's humped back and small dorsal fin when it surfaces. This whale was seen near Oyster Reef yesterday

Since we arrived in Cairns, now just over three weeks ago, the trades have been blowing almost continuously at around 20 to 25 knots, typical of July and August, the mid-winter months. There have been only two gaps in the strong winds calm enough for us to visit the nearby cays and reefs and do some snorkelling and prepare ourselves for some diving. It's not much fun behind just a reef for protection, but when it does calm down, which it did do over the last three days, it can be quite magical.

Relatively close to Cairns are the reefs of Green Island, Arlington, Upolu, Oyster, Vlassof and Michaelmas. Green Island is the only vegetated cay anywhere near Cairns and is delightful, despite the hordes of day trippers that are ferried to the island every day. Upolu's cay disappeared courtesy of Cyclone Yasi in 2011, but Vlassof still has a scrap of sand remaining. Michaelmas has a larger sand cay which is a roosting site for thousands of sea birds, mainly brown boobies, terns and noddies. The cay is an amazing site in the day time and the birds don't seem to go to sleep very easily at night, either!

The coral we've seen was in much better shape than elsewhere close to the mainland coast, where bleaching, siltation and cyclone damage have taken a toll. In fact, the underwater scenery and diversity of marine life we saw this morning were the best since the atolls of French Polynesia!



Ready for an underwater excursion in the shallows near Michaelmas Cay!



Coral cover on one of Michaelmas Cay's large bommies.



Green Island is the only vegetated (with rainforest) coral cay near Cairns.



This white tipped reef shark appeared at a bommie near Green Island.



Moorish idol in one of Michaelmas Cay's coral gardens.



One of several giant clams in the shallow coral gardens at Michaelmas Cay.



Large shoals of friendly jacks near one of the bommies.



At times, it seemed that every stretch of sand on Michaelmas Cay was covered by noisy seabirds.

While the wind has been up, we have taken time to go exploring the hinterland. Although we've driven through the Atherton Tableland before and up as far as the Daintree ferry, this time we've had time to explore further. The Daintree national park is quite unique. There are many plants and animals that are found there and nowhere else, like Bennett's tree kangaroos. Like around Mission Bay and the coast just south of Innisfail, the Daintree is one of the only places on the east coast where cassowaries are still hanging on. Like the Daintree, the Tableland is like nowhere else in Oz, in many places more like New Zealand, with dairy farms, forest pockets everywhere and tree ferns. We've been to many of the little volcanic crater lakes and searched (in vain!) for Lumholtz tree kangaroos.



Creek running through thick coastal rainforest north of Cairns.



Female cassowary seen by the roadside near Etty Bay, just south of Innisfail.



Mount Hypipamee crater on the Atherton Tableland.



Many of the rainforest trees, like this one in the Daintree, have buttress roots.



A strangler fig near Yungaburra on the Atherton Tableland.



Tree ferns, like these on the Atherton Tableland, always seem to prefer cooler climates. They look like their Gondwanan counterparts in NZ.

We've also caught up with our 90 year old friend Hazel Menehira and her partner, Hank West. It was Hazel's 90th birthday and a surprise party was organized by her son who lives in the Gold Coast. Relatives flew over from New Zealand and a Zoom session saw Hazel struck silent as her scattered whanau all over the world beamed in with smiles, waves and greetings.

We also met up with another old friend, Tim Montcrief from Tasmania, an ex Sail Indonesia rally participant, off with his partner, Dawn, on the long trip to Cape York at the tip of Australia.

We will set off for the outback while the wind continues to whistle and wait for it to abate before heading out to the reefs again! Sister Sue arrives at the end of August, so we will be in this area until then.

Photo shows Sundari anchored at Goold Island, just north of the Hinchinbrook Channel.

We are on a Ports North pile mooring in Cairns' Trinity Inlet, opposite the substantial navy base. We are now about 800nm (1500km) north of Moreton Bay and Brisbane and just under 2 months from when we sailed out from that bay on May 3rd.

Cairns has obviously recovered from its Covid 19 severe headache when almost no-one was able to or wanted to visit one of Oz's premier tourism hot spots. We hired a car last week and struck traffic congestion like we haven't seen or wanted to see for a long while, the streets thronged with crowds, many of whom had signed up for one of the 'Great Barrier Reef' tour packages.

We've been here before by boat, the first time in 1988, on Corsair and twice on Saraoni, in 2001 and 2008. When we were working in Papua New Guinea between 1988 and 1997, Cairns was our much visited 'home away from home', more so than either Britain or New Zealand.

Cairns is still best visited by boat, with the grand vista of the mountainous hinterland all around the harbour.

To get here, we sailed the well trodden path up from the Keppels, through the island studded, but stressful, part of Queensland's remote central coast to the Whitsundays, then hop scotched it to Magnetic Island and Townsville. From Townsville, we sailed to the Palm Group, and using light winds, entered Zoe Bay on the eastern side of Hinchinbrook Island, usually verboten to yachts, as it is exposed to the trades. Once past Hinchinbrook, the wet tropics dominate, with a succession of rain-forested islands before Fitzroy Island and finally the corner at Cape Grafton before Cairns.

We sampled one of the outer reefs that had supposedly not been too badly damaged by the trifecta of cyclones, coral bleaching and silt run off. Beaver reef and its tiny sand cay were only 20 nautical miles east of Dunk Island and its lovely anchorage, so an easy target. We have downloaded the Eye on the Reef app that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority urges transient visitors to the reef use. So we will add our comments and reports over the next few months as we sample some of the reefs that are accessible.



Scenes along the route to Cairns from the left, row by row:

Great Keppel's Middle Island, Curlew Island, Florence Bay, Magnetic Island
Cape Upstart
Horseshoe Bay, Orpheus Island
Hinchinbrook's Zoe Bay, Zoe creek waterfall




Characteristic wildlife en route to Cairns:

Rainbow bee-eater, kookaburra on Great Keppel;
Sleepy koala at the Forts, allied rock wallaby at Nelly Bay, Magnetic Island;
Giant clam and plate coral at Orpheus Island in the Palm Group.


Since we've been in Cairns, we have hired a car and visited the Daintree River and the Daintree National Park. We have been up to the Daintree once before by car and have sailed past the Cape Tribulation area twice before (going north and south), but this time used the Daintree ferry and explored the coastal Daintree rainforest. This, and our exploration of nearby reefs, will be the subject of the next blog!

Photo shows Sundari anchored in the lee of North West Island, a coral cay.

We are anchored off the northernmost of the Capricornia Cays in the southern section of the Great Barrier Reef, North West Island. The island, the second largest coral cay on the Barrier Reef is about 40nm from the mainland, north of Gladstone.



Approaching North West Island, the beach surrounding the cay and the Pisonia forest.

The Great Barrier Reef, despite the name, is not a uniform linear barrier like the one in New Caledonia or Papua New Guinea. It is comprised of a large number of disconnected reefs and islands. Most of the islands are continental in character, i.e. bits of the mainland that were surrounded by sea after the last sea level rise. Despite their origin, most have surrounding fringing coral reefs.

The Capricornia Cays are somewhat different as they are made up of sand that has accumulated on a series of reef patches growing on a large offshore bank. Most of the cays (there are around 7 of them) have a special type of Pisonia forest on them. Further north, there are some similar cays near Cairns, while many of the cays even further north towards the Torres Strait, have mangroves growing on them rather than Pisonia.

We have had mostly lovely weather, a bit windy and cool in the morning, but in the afternoons, calm and sunny. The cay, like most of its type, is surrounded by a coral platform, the reef flat, which is exposed at low tide and hard to access from the sea.

At high tide, we could spot sharks, rays and turtles in the shallows patrolling the shallow top of the reef. Black noddy terns nest here in their tens of thousands as do wedge tailed shearwaters (muttonbirds).

The noddies nest in the Pisonia branches, while the shearwaters burrow into the soft, sandy soil. Neither are nesting at the moment - it's a summer thing - but there are still plenty of noddies, who fly away from their treetop roosts at dawn and return just before dark. Few shearwaters are still here, as most migrate to other parts of the pacific in winter, but one disoriented shearwater flew into our cockpit after dark and stayed there all night!



Wildlife in and around NW Island:
white bellied sea eagle, oystercatcher
black noddy terns, wedgetailed shearwater
watch out for sharks, turtle in the shallows

We are off to the Keppel Islands tomorrow and heading north towards the Whitsundays after the next bout of strong winds, expected to last from Monday to Wednesday next week.

Drone photo shows the lovely anchorage along the 60 km long Platypus Bay along the northern coast of K'Gari.

We are anchored in our old haunts in the lower reaches of the Burnett River waiting for a clear weather window to sail north along the Queensland coast and out to the southernmost of the Great Barrier reefs, the 50 nautical mile stretch of the Capricornia / Bunker Group of reefs and associated coral cays.

We left Moreton Bay a couple of weeks ago, the arrival of Alison's old school friend, Clodagh, from Albany in WA, fortuitously coinciding with very favourable conditions for the passage north across the sometimes impassable Wide Bay Bar and the tricky onwards sail through the Great Sandy Strait inside K'Gari (Fraser island).

The main objective this tropical sailing season is to explore the outer reefs along the Great Barrier Reef, but this depends of course on calm enough weather to find safe and comfortable places to anchor.

When we first started sailing back in the late 1980s, we had little access to weather forecasting beyond a rather uncertain 3 day coastal forecast. We remember leaving the lovely anchorage behind Urupukapuka Island in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand in July 1987 for a trans Tasman ocean crossing with a favourable forecast, only to turn back a day later as a storm was forecast. A few hours later we had 2 anchors down with 60 knots of wind bearing down on us.

Of course, the forecasting of weather has improved immensely since then, but one wonders whether it really is so much better. Weather forecasts are made by supercomputers that crunch the data they obtain from thousands of weather stations around the world, satellite data and other information. There are several computer models available to the ordinary sailor, and conventional wisdom is that when the models align, i.e. say the same thing, the forecast is likely to be accurate.

The problem at the moment is that the models are not showing the same thing at all. There is a trough developing off the east coast of Australia and the possibility of a low pressure system. These conditions are common at this time of the year in the subtropics as the water remains warm after the summer. One model shows northerlies; another, westerlies, one more southerlies and a fourth south easterlies! If this was a forecast for a week or more away, then the discrepancies might be understandable, but they are not. They are for tomorrow! With such a battle of the models, we will just elect to stay at anchor here in the safety of the Burnett and wait for more certainty.



The anchorage off Kingfisher Resort on the west side of K'Gari in ideal conditions on the way north a week ago.



Sundari, anchored off Kingfisher Resort, K'Gari.



Lovely misty morning in the Burnett River after the forecast low clears off to seaward faster than predicted...shallow sub-tropical lows and troughs are notoriously hard to forecast. Note the covered dive compressor on top of the deck in the foreground - still unused!



One of the Capricornia Cays to the north of Bundaberg - the southernmost of the Great Barrier Reefs - not our photo though!

Photo shows Corsair perched on the edge of the fringing coral reef inside the lee of Kwatoto Island in PNG's D'Entrecasteaux Group.

We are in Manly Boat Harbour on the west side of Moreton Bay with Sundari, making last minute preparations to head north along the Queensland coast. Alison's old school chum, Clodagh, will be sailing with us for the first part of our trip, flying into Brisbane from WA's Albany, while sister Sue from Sheffield and the French Charentes, will join us later this year.

We were here 35 years ago in our first yacht, the 1933 kauri sloop, "Corsair", also preparing to head north towards the Torres Strait after a visit from Alison's sister and brother in law, Susan and Nick.

Little did we know at the time that we would end up teaching and living in Papua New Guinea for nearly ten years, an experience like nothing else we have ever had, before or after. At the time we sort of blundered into life in PNG, having little cruising money to sail on to Asia and the Red Sea as we had originally planned.

In the end, we taught in three PNG government high schools, mostly in rural areas, and with mostly PNG citizens as teachers and colleagues. The last year we were in PNG we had a cooperative agreement with the nascent tourist bureau in Milne Bay Province to approach the island province's villagers to see whether eco tourism development would be acceptable to them.

From a sailing point of view, it was the most challenging, dangerous, exhilarating and rewarding of times, often sailing in waters that had never been charted sufficiently, or at all, more often than not without a working auxiliary engine, relying on sailing skills that we had to develop fast to avoid a multiude of potential calamities.

Our status as teachers in PNG's own education system gave us a window onto a world that few have ever had the privilege to experience. PNG was certainly at the time we were there somewhere between the stone-age and the space age, having to cope with the pressures of both.

The photos in this blog give a small indication of our time out of school and on the water while we were in PNG. Will we return? We would love to, but in some ways, Corsair was probably an ideal vessel to explore the more remote and interesting parts of this fascinating country, of a size and construction that ordinary villagers could cope with and adapt to. Despite the fact that Saraoni, our second yacht we owned for over 22 years, was named after one of our favourite PNG anchorages, we feel that fancy yachts sailing into PNG waters may be just a bit too much for ordinary villagers to be comfortable with, who for the most part showed us the most amazing generosity and hospitality while we were sailing amongst their astonishingly beautiful island homes.

Early Days with Corsair



Corsair, a 1933 kauri racing sloop, was bought by us in Auckland in 1986, and brought up to some sort of ocean readiness in a Panmure boat yard (first photo) over a 6 month time period. The second photo shows Corsair on its first sea outing at Izzie Bay on Rangitoto island in the Hauraki Gulf, and the third photo shows Alison skippering Corsair back into Auckland Harbour. We were to cross the turbulent Tasman only a few months later, after little prior experience, an ocean adventure that took us 17 sometimes tortuous days.

The Papuan Gulf - 1988-1989

After sailing from NZ's Bay of Islands in July 1987 (mid winter!), first to New Caledonia, then along the Queensland coast, we arrived in Port Moresby, PNG's capital, expecting to sail back to Cairns to earn some more money before continuing westwards into Asia. Instead, more by accident than intention, we ended up at Ihu High Scool in PNG's Gulf Province, surrounded by jungle, teaching for a year and a half. We tried to get Corsair into Ihu's swift flowing Vailala river, but with no charting ever having been done, this was quite a perilous adventure and we ended up nearly sunk on the bar and forced to beat south against the trade winds for 120 miles back to Port Moresby, returning to Ihu more sensibly by small plane instead.

Ihu was in fact only accessible by occasional small plane landings or unnanounced arrivals of the freight ship. Many of the school kids who weren't from the local area had to walk to school and back at the start and end of each term for up to a week at a time through the bush. There was no phone contact with the outside world, but Alison built and ran the school's trade store, which became a popular place for school kids, staff, government workers and villagers near and far.



Photo shows an exuberant end of year 'class party' for Alison's class group. They saved up all year to have a feast at the end of the school year!

The Torres Strait and Daru - 1989 to 1993

Our second school posting was at Daru High School, situated on the island of Daru at the northern end of the Torres Strait. Daru was a dysfunctional and chaotic town but also the 'capital' of PNG's resource rich Western province. We stayed there for four years, anchored in the lee of the island in what euphemistically could be called a 'harbour'. We made two trips down to Australia's Thursday Island during that time, mostly under sail, as our engine soon went kaput, a perilous 100 nm trip through swift currents and jagged reefs.



Daru's wharf and most frequent cargo ship are shown in the top two photos, counterposed with the commonly seen local sailing canoes, with their sails stitched together out of rice bags.



Daru was located between impoverished PNG and affluent Australia. Many Daru residents had relatives on both sides of the porous border. The Torres Strait is a fascinating place with a troubled history. Daru families had high hopes for their kids' achievements in school and our time at the school was often hard work. Apart from the odd foreign volunteer, all the teachers were PNG trained citizens, teaching a high school curriculum all in English! Successful high school students went on to senior secondary school elsewhere in PNG and the highest achievers were given scholarships to continue secondary school in Australia.

Photos show a PNG colleague's extended family on Corsair on a holiday trip back to his mainland home, a science teacher at an end of year graduation with the adoring family audience at the ceremony (top right and centre right photos). The bottom two photos were taken in a remote inland village where Geoff helped a student set up a solar electrification project - all funded through his own fundraising efforts!

Alotau and Milne Bay - 1995 to 1998



Photo shows Corsair anchored off the picturesque East Cape of Milne Bay in late 1997. There are far too many photos of this part of our sailing lives, and so have posted them in the gallery HERE.
Just click on the link, then each photo opens up when you select it in the gallery. Switch from one photo to another by pressing 'Next' in the menu bar.

Our third and final school posting was to Alotau's Cameron Secondary School in PNG's eastern Milne Bay Province. This was a pretty and geographically varied island archipelago region. We spent the first two years teaching, both as heads of department in the newly created senior school. Our students for the most part went on to college, university or tech college if successful in their exams. Those who didn't do so well went back to their respective villages. We were given a newly built house courtesy of EU funding, but like elsewhere in our PNG school postings we slept on Corsair, using the house as a convenient place to leave our surplus boat stuff and freshen up for school time. Our school house was in fact used as a favourite lodging spot for visitors and inspectors who turned up at the school from time to time!

Our last year in Milne Bay was spent cruising around most of the province, charting anchorages and taking notes of facilities and hazards, talking to villagers and generally enjoying ourselves. Many Milne Bay people have a good command of English as well as Tok Pisin, Motu and their own and possibly other local languages and dialects so it was easy to learn a lot about their way of life, hopes and dreams.

Whatever we learned we passed on to Jennifer Varsilli, the enthusiastic Milne Bay tourism department head, who wanted to know whether small scale village based eco tourism was feasible in selected parts of the province, as direct flights into Alotau from Cairns had just started.

We were lucky as many of the villagers recognised us as teachers from the same school that their kids were at, or had gone to. This made quite a difference when travelling around the beautiful coastline of Milne Bay's islands and mainland bays. Incidentally, we still have hundreds of detailed drawings and notes of the anchorages we went to and explored, mostly being the only yacht to have ventured there. It was only in the Louisiades did we ever really encounter any other cruising yachts. At Bagaman in the Calvados Chain we met up with Heather and John from Bundaberg in Queensland on their 32 foot yacht "Kindred Spirit", who we have kept in contact with ever since.



Photo shows Corsair on show and on sale in Port Moresby marina early 1998.

We finally left PNG in February 1998 after trying to sell Corsair in Port Moresby. We left the boat eventually with an Australian couple who managed moorings south of the city and flew to Cairns and bought Saraoni, our second yacht. Saraoni was named after the island that protected our favourite anchorage at the mouth of Milne Bay while teaching in Alotau. Corsair was finally sold after 8 months while we were engaged in teaching at schools in Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Photo shows the Wicked camper van we hired for our two weeks or so in New Zealand. We had no idea of the meaning of the slogan on the side (Mystery machine) until people (mainly kids) told us it was the van that the four young detectives and their dog (Scooby Doo) used in a popular TV programme. It got a lot of thumbs up and grins from the kids we passed!


We are in an AirBnB in Papatoetoe, South Auckland, ready for the plane flight back to the Gold Coast and Sundari. We arrived a week after a disastrous cyclone (Gabrielle) and heavy flooding in Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel. Roads were still cut when we arrived and many houses red stickered awaiting investigation after slips and mud engulfed whole communities. As usual in these climate change enhanced times, the floods were 'unprecedented'. Luckily for us, we have had warm to hot, sunny, summery weather every day we have been travelling around the North.



The old sailing dinghy we had left behind on a dinghy rack at Tutukaka was still there, so we hastily rigged it for a photo ad!

Our main objective on this visit was to dispose of the daunting quantity of stuff we had left behind in a Bay of Islands storage locker, the two dinghies left behind in Tutukaka and catch up with old friends. Rather to our surprise, everything went very smoothly, although we had to make detours in places because of closed roads in Northland (Te Tai Tokerau). By yesterday, after 10 days of selling stuff we didn't want to bring back to Australia, we had sold 2 outboards, the sailing dinghy, a VHF radio, a pile of nylon, plaited mooring ropes, a ream of NZ east coast paper charts, a bilge pump, lifebuoy light, bosun's chair, two sets of paddles, a bicycle, a bicycle basket, a bicycle carrier and a tent and sleeping mat! There was also a hell of a lot of stuff to dump in the waste tip and charity shops. We still seem to be bringing back on the plane rather a lot of stuff we haven't used, or had even seen for 6 years, including Alison's bike and a heap of memorabilia.



The Sail Indo rally gathering at Bryce and Martha's kiwifruit orchard west of Whangarei - some circumnavigators were here, too

As far as old friends were concerned, we stayed with family friends, Alan and Janice, twice (arriving and leaving), in their new, comfortable home in Snells Beach, overlooking Kawau Bay. They have both got quite absorbed in the local community since retirement, Alan enthusiastically trying to help restore native bird populations, including kiwi, and Jan active in nearby Warkworth's museum.

The Sail Indonesia gathering at Bryce and Martha's kiwifruit orchard west of Whangarei brought 30 odd sailors, (now mostly ex sailors!) some of whom we had sailed many sea miles with and shared memorable experiences. We also caught up with more sailors, Megan and Andy (Wairua) and Glynis (Sea Hawk) in Kerikeri, Ron (Pilgrim) on the Russel Road, and, by phone, Craig and Lynne (Solan) in Waihi and David (Sahula) on Kawau Island.



Tawharanui Reserve and its lovely beach and view towards Little and Great Barrier Islands is located on a peninsula near where Alan and Jan live in Snells Beach.



Megan, Andy and young son now live in Kerikeri. They crossed the Pacific in the smallest of sloops the same year we did. Andy is about to fly to Suva in Fiji to bring back an equally small catamaran.




Kerikeri Basin and the Stone Store, where we were moored for a few months immediately before we crossed the Tasman on our 1933 kauri sloop, "Corsair".


We should be back on Sundari by this time tomorrow and have a few days in the marina before getting ready for this year's sailing adventure.

We did have time to snatch a few hours visiting old, familiar places in Te Tai Tokerau, but walks were out because of cyclone damage, thankfully not so severe as on the east coast and in poor Vanuatu, currently recovering after two cyclones passed through.



Maninangina kauri hugger, Puketi Forest, west of Kerikeri.



Opua moorings on a misty morning, near where we left a heap of junk in a storage locker.



Whangarei Town Basin, with many new overseas yachts in attendance this summer after the pandemic closures.



The weird looking, new Hundertwasser Art Gallery and roof garden at the Whangarei Town Basin.



Mount Manaia, a craggy, volcanic landmark near Whangarei Heads was out of bounds because of cyclone damage, but we did hear several kiwi calling at night.

Photo taken using the drone last year showing Sundari in the Gold Coast Broadwater near Sea World. We are in the exact same spot again!

It's been a while since we posted a blog, so here goes. We are back on Sundari, anchored just off the beach near Sea World in the Gold Coast, not far from where the tragic helicopter accident involving the 2 colliding Sea World helicopters occurred. This anchorage is almost unbearable over busy weekend and holiday periods, but we have persevered as it is sheltered and safe and it's easy to get ashore and do the stuff that us boaties have to do.

This mainly means repairing things on the boat that have broken down and improving parts of the boat that make it more comfortable or efficient. The current jobs have included repairing the freezer and one of our 3 outboards, installing new galley equipment and solar panels and spending money on a new, small inflatable dinghy for use where the tidal ranges make using our large RIB difficult. All a bit boring compared to tripping around, but we are getting ready for our next adventures.

We sail up to Moreton Bay in a day or two to check out our mooring and piece of land on Lamb Island, then head off to nearby Stradbroke Island for some diving, swimming, kayaking, cycling and maybe even some croc spotting! Later next month we have to fly over to NZ to dispose of all the stuff in our storage shed in the Bay of Islands that has been languishing there since we sailed from Opua in June 2017. We also have a yachties get together near Whangarei involving survivors of some of the Sail Indo rallies, one of which (2008) we participated in.

This year we have dedicated to trying out our almost unused dive equipment up the Barrier Reef and possibly in PNG if we make it that far. Sister Sue is flying out for a few weeks on the boat so have that to look forward to as well. Covid and distance have made contact with family reduced mostly to emails, Facebook and phone calls. The Queensland sailing season more or less ends by November, so this year we may keep sailing south to New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria for the summer. We are also making plans to revisit SE Asia for wildlife and a trip either to East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda?) or western South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

The last of La Nina is playing itself out in North Queensland and NZ's North Island. The forecast is for a complete switch to a moderate to strong El Nino. Not good news for farmers, and it will probably increase the bushfire risk on land, but it will be a relief for us yachties as it means dry conditions and weaker trade winds, so hopefully pleasanter on the water.