Report Of My Trip So Far Options

[MartinF]

Well here at last is the story I promised you. It took a bit longer than expected because I lost my pictures when my laptop got damaged in a flood in Cambodia and had to get someone to send me replacements from DVD copies. Before I forget, a very happy new year to all you fishos!

You’re all familiar with the first bit of the trip, where I arrived in Sydney and met some of you, went fishing with Jack, went to the meet at the boat club, went fishing again with Jumpy and Haji and then the next day went Marlin fishing with Jumpy and his mates and we got the spectacular triple hookup.

After this, I finally managed to track down a car I liked the look of and Frank helped me, over the course of a few days, to fix it up, get the boat fitted on top as well as giving me a box of kit to get me started.

So almost a month after I arrived I set off to meet up with a friend from back home who was travelling the East coast with his girlfriend. On the way there I stopped in Port Macquarie where I spent the night fishing and caught my first legal bream and flathead which made their way onto the bbq.

Over the course of the next week we saw some sights in northern NSW together and did a bit of fishing from the boat, but unfortunately not very successfully since the recent floods had turned the water murky and with the water level up so much we couldn’t find a bite anywhere.

I said good bye to my friend and made my way to Byron Bay where I met a group of backpackers, some of which I would end up travelling with for over seven months afterwards. We had a great time in Byron Bay and then continued north into Queensland. After a short stay in Rainbow Beach we hopped over to Fraser Island with five of us in the car, where I was hoping to hook into some of the quality giant trevally that people are always raving about. It turned out a little bit different. The day after we arrived the island got hit by a massive storm front which flooded the place out and turned the usual beautiful beaches into one big river crossing. The car struggled somewhat with the high water levels and we got stuck on the beach a few times after the alternator stopped working and the battery subsequently ran flat. After some harrowing experiences, including getting stuck below the high tide mark on an incoming tide around sunset, we managed to make it off the island with everything in tact, but I’ll definitely have to get back out there some day to get the real Fraser Island experience.

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With my companions’ money running low it was time to start work and after some looking around we ended up fruit picking in Mudubbera, Queensland. It’s a small town in the heart of the Queensland citrus country. Fruit picking is pretty crappy work but we had a good time there anyway, with a big backpacker community on the campground. At the end of it with went to the bi-annual rodeo in a nearby dairy town which was pretty awesome, more so considering we were the only ‘tourists’ there. We ended up sleeping with eight people in a Toyota campervan, which was interesting to say the least. With the citrus season ending and more money to be made we went back to the coast and ended up in Rockhampton. When we put the boat in the water to go for a fish, I discovered that the outboard was all seized up. I took it into the Yamaha dealership in Cairns a few weeks later and when they took it apart they told me that without doubt whoever had done the last service on it, had neglected to put any oil in the gearbox! Obviously, this had caused the whole thing to rust together. Since I couldn’t take it back to the shipyard in Sydney and couldn’t afford to spend another $900 on a new gearbox, we haven’t been able to use the boat as much as I wanted to since then, although we did get quite a lot of good use out of the boat on the roof, watching sunsets and things like that
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Anyway, there wasn’t much work around Rockie so we went further up along the coast, did some good fishing in Yeppoon and then ended up in Mackay where we got a job building these huge marquis for the local mining show. We lived just next to the beach, in the dunes and had a good time fishing as well as kite-surfing since we’d met an American girl who was a kite-surfing instructor and she taught us the ropes as well as letting us use her gear.
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After all that work it was time for some relaxation and we went to Airlie Beach for about a week, just relaxing and going out on the town, before heading further up to Cairns to look for work once again.
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After two weeks it became apparent that the place was absolutely packed with backpackers looking for a job and the only way of getting one was to have good legs and a pair of knockers. While I might do alright on the legs bit, I didn’t fancy the plastic surgery that much. We did hear that in a small town just north of there plenty of work was on offer and so we packed up and headed to Port Douglas, which is the best decision I ever made.

We found work fairly quickly and I ended up working as a waiter and kitchen hand in the Central Hotel for over two months. Surprisingly nice work with fun co workers and lots of free food, which is always a bonus if you’re a backpacker! We all lived at a combined hostel/campground with probably another hundred or so backpackers. These north Queensland towns are pretty much staffed entirely by backpackers during the season and that creates a wonderful atmosphere since you know everyone everywhere. Thanks to one of the chefs in the hotel we discovered a really great fishing spot, very remote and just inside the estuary of whatever river it is that runs there. We usually went out on days off and caught all kinds of different fish, including a nice cod, some good trevally and various other random species as well as seeing rays, shark and even a sea horse.

Perhaps the most important thing though is that I met Janine, my girlfriend, in my last month there. We’d been staying in the same campground for the whole time but for whatever reason hadn’t really spent any time together until two days before she was supposed to leave and go to Cairns for a diving trip to the Coral Sea. Luckily for me, she came back, twice, and after spending some more time together she decided to change her plans of going to Asia with a friend and come with me to travel north and over to Perth.

We left on the 14th of October, in the company of one of her colleagues and the last of my travel companions from Byron Bay. The next three months were easily the most impressive and enjoyable of my whole trip in Australia. We made our way into Cape York Peninsula through beautiful Daintree River NP, by way of Cooktown and Lakefield NP and up and across to the aboriginal community of Pumpurraw. Driving through these beautiful remote stretches of wilderness with the varying vegetation and wildlife was fantastic. We saw and experienced so much, not least of which the amazing hospitality and helpfulness of the people of outback Australia.
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On our way into the Northern Territory, in Burketown, we suffered a breakdown with the car. I think we must’ve hit a rock or something during our travels through the craziness of Cape York and on the next rough road one of the rear shockies snapped straight off the base plate. We’d had a good night the day before with some of the locals, one of whom even took us out on his boat in the middle of the night to go croc spotting. We met him again the next day and when I told him of our problem he set out to find replacement parts and to fix the car. In the end if took the efforts of his whole construction crew, who brought out there mobile welding truck and fixed up the whole car, all for the price of one round of beer. Amazing people!
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From here we went along the inside of the Gulf of Carpenteria to finally arrive in Darwin, where we picked up one of my friends from back home and went a week to Kakadu NP. After dropping him off we headed south once more, making for Broome by way of Litchfield NP and the Kimberley. What a great area! We were quite late in the season so the whole Gibb River Road was deserted and many of the roadhouses were shut for the season. We visited the place where much of the movie “Australia” was shot (what a horrible beast of a movie by the way, given what he had to work with) and also visited the Bungle Bungles in Purnululu NP. It’s quite a trip to get there but well worth the effort. Scorching hot, dryer than New York during prohibition, but remarkably beautiful.
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Of course for most of this trip we couldn’t do any fishing, since there isn’t much water out there and so when we were almost to Broome, in Derby, I decided we had to at least try our hand at some barra fishing. We got directions from several people who all told us to go to some stretch of river on a cattle property just outside of Derby. In the end it took us about 3 hours, during which we saw a large part of the property, to find the river. It was deserted except for one aboriginal bloke and his family who were fishing with hand-lines. While talking to him, he caught a good 90cm barra, beautifully silver and muscular. He promised to give us his next catch and we set off to try and catch our own. Our lines had barely hit the water before he came driving up with the next one and gave it to us, just like that. Like I said, very nice people in the outback. Although we didn’t manage to catch one ourselves, having to settle instead of a small shovel nose ray, some catfish and other assorted small stuff, we still had a beautiful dinner of fresh estuary barra. It really doesn’t get much better than that.
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In Broome we had to say goodbye to our two travel companions, who were heading back home, but we picked up another friend of mine who had come down from Holland to travel with us to Perth. And so after a week of chilling out we set off once again. I have to say that the north of WA is not my favorite bit of Australia. It’s very barren and bleak with lots of industry but not much else and it wasn’t really until we hit Exmouth that things started to look up. Having said that, we did catch some tasty fish before then, as well as seeing a lot of turtles and various other wildlife.
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Exmouth, however, changed everything. Or I should say Cape Range NP, which runs down from Exmouth on the west side and runs along the most accessible part of Ningaloo Reef. We spent five day here, just living right next to the beach, catching our own lunch and dinner straight out of the sea in between snorkeling on the beautiful reef. I’ve been back since and it’s still my favorite spot in Western Australia. The fact that you can just walk off the beach and be straight on the reef is amazing, especially coupled with the fact that there are so few other people around. I would’ve liked to stay for another week or so but we had to be in Perth for Christmas so had to keep moving south. Among the many fish we caught (and the many big fish we lost) were a 47cm snapper (north-west emperor), a 50-something slate bream and a small Picasso triggerfish. The latter wasn’t an amazing catch but given the size of the hook and the small mouth, I thought it was a pretty heroic effort on the part of the fish!
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So from here it was further down to Shark Bay, where I caught my first shark, which was kind of cool. The whole Shark Bay area is very beautiful and comes highly recommended as well. If you’re ever there, take a trip on the catamaran Shotover, which does eco tours to see the dugong, dolphin and turtles in the area. She’s a beautiful and very fast boat and it’s a great day out for a very reasonable price. I came back later and did the trip again with my parents, on which more later.
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After this we briefly left Australia to visit HRH Prince Leonard in Hutt River Province, quite an interesting and eccentric gentleman, before finally arriving in Perth by way of Geraldton. From here my friend went home again and my girlfriend and I moved into a house and worked for a few months. Her visa was going to run out in July, whereas mine was still valid until April of this year, so we decided that instead of her having to go home in July, we’d both leave for a while and go to Asia. Since life there is much cheaper, we’d be able to get a good four month holiday in. So at the start of June we left for a truly epic trip. We spent six weeks in Indonesia, seeing a lot of that beautiful island nation. I tried my hand at diving for the first time and absolutely loved it. I think it’s possibly the most rewarding and amazing thing you can do if you love nature.
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We also took a fabulous boat trip from Lombok to Komodo. Three days with eleven people and four crew on a smallish boat, straight through all the islands; it was fantastic. I’d actually brought a bit of fishing gear with me: a telescope rod, my shimano 2500 and a bunch of hooks and sinkers and such, but due to overfishing it’s damn near impossible to catch anything decent from the shore in Asia. I did have a go on the last night on the boat but all we ended up catching were tiny snapper and similar fish.
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Komodo itself was stunning. To stand toe to toe with a two meter long lizard is a surreal experience. They are impressive animals and we saw no less than eight of them, with many of them actively walking around, tasting our scent with their tongues and probably considering if it would be worth it to try and drag one of us off for tea.
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After doing some dives at Komodo we flew over to Vietnam where I got to shoot an M16, also a very interesting experience. From there we went into Cambodia which is an interesting country as it was only so recently ripped apart by civil war, but at the same time holds such amazing treasures as the temples at Angkor Wat. It would take weeks to see all of them but we got a good look in the three days we spent there before heading over to Bangkok which is another world altogether.
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I would have to say that of all the Asian countries I’ve seen, Thailand has most to offer as a total. It has the culture, the nice food, friendly people, stunning mountains in the north, amazing, lush, tropical islands in the south. The only bad thing I could say is that it’s a bit more westernized than many of the other countries in South East Asia.

We spent some time in the north, near Chiang Mai and went for a fantastic elephant ride in Pai, before crossing into Laos where we travelled down river by boat to Luang Prabang and further by bus to the capital of Vientiane. Then it was back into Thailand and straight on through to the south where we spent the last 10 days of our holiday on tropical Koh Tao. We went all across the island on a motorbike, snorkeled and swam and even took a little hobie-cat out sailing. Then I saw an ad for an affordable fishing trip so on our second to last day we went out on this local fishing boat and spent the day bouncing cuttlefish off the bottom to catch some of the various species out there. We mostly caught two different types of trevally, neither of them familiar to me and my girlfriend caught the absolute biggest fish of the day. We got some restaurant to cook it up for us and had a beautiful dinner that night.
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Two more days were spent in Kuala Lumpur before it was time to say goodbye to my girlfriend since she had to go back to Germany and start her PhD in Chemistry (not just prettier than me, but also smarter, it seems!) while I went back to Perth. Since I had decided to stay my second year over here, my parents thought it would be a good excuse to come over for a holiday. They’ll be leaving very soon, having been here three months. They arrived in Perth about a month after I got back and we travelled together for a month in one of those campervan numbers. We went up the west coast all the way to Exmouth and back to Albany before making our way up along the coast back to Perth. It was a great trip and it amazed me that it was so different from my first trip, just because of the different time of year.

So that’s a very quick recap of my adventures over the last 19 months or so. I could go into a lot more detail but it’s already quite a bit of text as it is. If you do want to see a bit more, you’re more than welcome to browse through the blogs I’ve been keeping since I got here, they’re available from the link in my signature.

I’ve included some fishing-related pictures and just some general stuff from our travels. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

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This was on our trip to the south-west. The salmon were running and we went fishing for them but nobody was catching anything except the guys with the nets.

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Beautiful sunrise near Pemberton in the great forests of south-west WA

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Partying in Airlie Beach

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Crossing Roper Bar somewhere in NT I think, can't remember where right now.

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It really does get very remote in the Kimberley..

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Some pics of Asia. Big floods in Saigon and me and the missus in a tuktuk in Cambodia

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Bayon temple at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

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Plenty of big spiders in Asia!

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[storms72]

Brilliant report and pics martin. I am truly jealous and very inspired, can't say how much I want to pack up the ute and head off-maybe in a few years family and the new business will allow a experience even a 10th the size of yours will do us.

Cheers mate
Jason.

[Jumpus GooDarus]

It took a bit longer than expected

Na ! wot made ewe say that ?????

Velly good report though

[MartinF]

Hey guys,

Just a quick update from the road.

We've made it almost all the way back to the east. Has been a really good trip again. We're currently in Bairnsdale, about 300km or so east of Melbourne.

Haven't done much fishing due to the fast pace of travel but we did go on a nice fishing charter out of Port Lincoln. Caught some pink snapper, heaps of Sweep and about 40 King George Whiting. Couldnt take most of the fish but we had two nice dinners out of it and a really good day out on the water.

Still planning to be in Sydney around de 7th of March.

See you then!

[nimrod]

Hey guys,

Just a quick update from the road.

We've made it almost all the way back to the east. Has been a really good trip again. We're currently in Bairnsdale, about 300km or so east of Melbourne.

Haven't done much fishing due to the fast pace of travel but we did go on a nice fishing charter out of Port Lincoln. Caught some pink snapper, heaps of Sweep and about 40 King George Whiting. Couldnt take most of the fish but we had two nice dinners out of it and a really good day out on the water.

Still planning to be in Sydney around de 7th of March.

See you then!

Martin. I want to arrange a get together at the club when you get back.
However the 7th march is clean up australia day and I am committed to an annual event that takes most of my day, and I am leaving on Friday 12th for a week down in Lakes Entrance Vic.
How long are you going to be back in Sydney ?. I will be back around 21st 22nd from Vic, will you be here after that date ?.
If not we may have to arrange for a meet during the week, but most members will be at work.
Either that or someone else can make a time to meet and I will have to miss out.
No doubt I will be meeting up with you anyway, you know where I live.

[MartinF]

Hey Frank,

Well I'm sure we'll meet up anyway since I need to bring your boat and gear back!

My mate is flying out on the 7th, sometime in the afternoon I think.

My flight is on the 21st, also in the afternoon, so I don't know what would be the best idea.

Meanwhile, here's a little pic I took on Raymond Island, just off Paynesville, Vic. Really cool to see a mother Koala with a young.

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