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.