Here We Go Again - Chapter 42 - Karumba Day 2

The wind has picked up during the night. The adjacent tree rubbed its leaf covered branches across the edge of the van all night. Between it and the awning struggling in the wind, there are lots to thwart the silence of the outback.

Robyn and I had stayed up late last night watching the first 4 West Wing programs even though we were tired from the drive, the drama manages to keep me awake. Robyn began snoring loudly after midway through episode 2. Morning sees us pulling down the awning “just in case” and stowing it before heading out for an exploratory expedition.

As we are readying ourselves I notice a lady “feeding” the birds of prey. There are kites and eagles around. She is throwing pieces of meat into the air. Some are being caught, others scooped up from the ground. The wind is playing havoc with glide paths.

.

She is from Victoria and a regular here to Karumba. They have been here since May and consider themselves regulars if not residents. Being from the colder half of the country at this time of the year, they enjoy 6 months here in the sun where she, with her aged care background, manages to find a bit of work in the park, to keep her amused.

She talks about the birds as if they are hers, of fishing and the need for a boat here, and how there are two types of visitors to the park. There are the “permanents” like herself and the itinerants like us. Many itinerants end up being “permanents” after they fall in love with the area, returning year after year for extended periods. 

Forbsy quips he is on a continual trek to find his Shangri La but has yet to find it.

I call a couple of mates I have not spoken to for a while, the Missing Link and my cousin Phil, whilst not in lockdown, are in areas just outside. Phil is on a farm so there is always something to do, he is fencing today and enjoys the break of talking to me, as opposed to knocking steel posts into the ground. Missing Link on the other hand is decking his back deck and readying themselves for a trip like ours, but if their house sitters from Victoria are unwilling to come to New South Wales, their plans might be thwarted again.

There are two distinct towns here. There is Karumba and Karumba Point (where we are situated). I found a map last night on a signpost that detailed “all” the attractions in the area and consulting it we head out towards the main town in search of things to see. 

According to the map there are 29 places of interest. 14 in the main town, 4 between and the rest in Karumba Point. Not really relying on the map, we drive.

In Karumba we head down the  main street to a massive structure we saw as we drove in last night. To get to it we pass through the “shopping centre”. The supermarket we are to find later is a hybrid of essentials, white goods and hardware, a must useful stop. 

The large structure, signposted New Century Resources has no apparent use, until you check on Google and find its a mineral resources company. With that in mind what the shed could be and what it actually is perhaps is less a mystery than when first sighted. There are large generators down one side of the building suggesting some sort of cooling requirement but then again why do rocks need cooling. Robyn originally thought it was a fish/prawns packaging centre but it is far too large for that.

Speaking of fish, a little further down the road is the Les Wilson Barramundi Discovery Centre. Here there are large dry ponds where perhaps barramundi farming originated on one side of the road. On the other a larger grey complex part surrounding a raised pool. The signage and the Visitor Information sign beckon us to enter, but we don’t. We place it in the memory banks for late and continue driving.

We have now driven the length of Karumba, we drive back, specifically to hit the supermarket, but also see if we missed anything. I turn down a dead end street to where the road meets the water. There are prawn trawlers here, lots of them to the left. To the right a 4 tankered road train is either filling or being refilled on what appears to be a vacant block over a fuel outlet. Not far away a very large fuel tank had been seen, not just a “regular” one, but one 15 metres tall and at least 10 metres in diameter. 

There is a walkway along the edge of the river. Another slip in the memory banks for a ‘ron (later on) experience. The walkway extends along what the GPS suggests is a street. Many of the streets on the GPS do not exist, but this is not endemic to this town alone. Its very frustrating how out of date the installed GPS actually is. At the time I purchased the Cruiser I was caused to pen a letter to Toyota about it – as with most large corporations, although they talk a good talk when it comes to customer services and the issues of the owner, no response was ever received. All they want is to sell more Cruisers.

We have difficulty finding more than half the sights of interest on the map, which when all said and done did seem to have some age to it. Perhaps age wearied some of them.

Enough said, its getting towards the top of the tide. There is a walkway back at the boat ramp adjacent to the caravan park that Robyn would like to look at and will allow me to check out potential fishing spots for later. The sign at the boat ramp is a sobering reminder of the dangers of the waters here. No fishing within 60 meters of the boat ramp – obviously so as not to attract any crocodiles with thrashing fish to an area where people are trying to retrieve and launch boats. No fish cleaning either, in fact back at the van park there is a place specifically made for the purpose. The carcasses after filleting are frozen and used for crab traps. In fact crabbers are encouraged to take what they need.

My plan is to have a larger lure attached to my “big gear” and a smaller one to the casting rig I have. The wind will be the issue of course. The southerly is presently blowing across any line I might like to try. I endure the conditions for only a short time and decide it might be better further along the beach towards the pub as the curvature of the river means it might be slightly out of the wind.

I pack up and head that way. Driving into the street I am reminded its Saturday afternoon in the bush. Not a parking spot to be seen in cooee of the beach. I retire to the van for lunch instead.

Recently on our houseboat trip on the Murray, friends of ours introduced us to a lunch treat. Pita bread, doused in Guacamole, smothered in a tin of tuna (with flavouring, in this case lemon pepper), with diced tomato and sweet chilli sauce. The bread is rolled into a wrapp and consumed. Because the tuna can be a little wet, its needs to be drained but even then you can have the juice roll down your arms. I tend to eat mine over the sink.

Its 30 degrees now and the afternoon feels very lazy. Not sure if Silver Leader and Forbsy are of a mind to wander the fishing spots in search of something pelargic in the afternoon. The wind has not abated and I take down and stowe the awning for fear a gust will rip it from its mounts. Between the tree rubbing against the van on one side and the awning flapping in the incessant breeze, sleep last night was a bit broken.

First we need bait and the best bait evidently are the one of the myriad of grasshoppers flying around. Now catching them, that is another thing. I try the stealth approach, trying to sneak up on their blind side only to have them fly off, wind assisted, to a safe spot. Forbsy tried the hide out of sight and trap them on the awning. Works for one but the rest again head off.

We have one, hmmmm, not enough. I continue. Another fisherman (obviously as you will see) wanders towards me giggling at my approach. “After bait are you” he smirks, then simply walks up to one of the ground and grabs it (on the second attempt at least). Now we have 2 and we have a better plan. I capture a couple more as does Forbsy and we are ready.

Well we are, Silver Leader is still “dealing” with gear. We somewhat frustratingly wander over and see what is going on (high tide was more than an hour ago and we are losing time). He grumbles that his favourite rod has lost its tip – devastation. He is madly flitting through the large number of rods he has for a replacement. 

Unbeknown to Forbsy and I, Rose is coming with us meaning we will need 2 vehicles. We head off to the selected spot from their exploration this morning leaving the grumpy one to his remistrations. 

The spot they found this morning  is along a well worn track beside the airport. Access is a sandy road, not requiring deflation of the tyres. Along the track there are a number of diersions to the beach, no more than 10 to 20 metres in length, such is the closeness of the track to it. Several have vehicles parked in them already.

We get to the spot “found” this morning. It appears unused and we park and start collecting gear for the walk to the water.. On the beach we see a family to the left of us, they have driven onto the beach and have taken up residence a hundred or so metres for where we enter. The tide has already ebbed significantly revealing lots of rocks that would have been snags at high tide. They are slippery where the sun is yet to dry the slimy mud on top so care is required. 

You can get very close to the water to cast and soon Forbsy and I are propelling lures at the tranquil ocean. Here we are slightly out of the howling gale of this morning and the lures reach their full distance from the shore unhampered by the cross breeze. 

The water is shallow here, letting the bouncing lures to sink at all brings them back with green slimy weed. I had started with a large metal slug as the lure of choice where Forbsy was using a vibrating lure. For me the weed was presenting no issue. Forbsy was peeling off weed fish with every retrieval.

Silver Leader finally joins us and starts hurling his selection of lures at the water. His frustration evident in the extra distance he is achieving.

Enough of this lure fishing, I rerig for a static bait. I am going to use up the squid we had from our last creek adventure and deposit it attached to a gang hook and sit and wait. The line has a sinker on it  but still seems to flow with the ebbing tide, a fact that Silver Leader muses at, when he goes to cast only to find my baited line in his line of sight.

I get nibbles from time to time, but nothing of significance. Forbsy, bored to the brink, heads off in search of another “spot” but soon returns with news of nothing. He has, though, collected shells for his grandchildren and is looking around a pool just near us for more when he beckons me to it. The shells in the pool are moving, and not with the movement of the still water, the animals resident in the shells are moving them around it. Fascinated we video the movement and the result is almost time lapse in nature as shells move, stop and move again.

I check my bait. I feel I have a rather large weed fish this time, but as everything gets a little closer to the water’s edge, a not so green splash of colour breaks the water. I have “hooked” a ray and for a moment there is more than dead weight on the line. The fish is obviously not hooked sufficiently, if at all, as it rolls, releases itself and heads off. The only even close to a catch all afternoon.

This resultless fishing, a product of the lateness of our commencement, sees Forbsy checking out the “structures” of the beach. A notorious rock stacker, he investigates two such structures which we walked past earlier. 

No Forbsy you cannot knock one down and start again and claim it as your own. SO what does he do, he attempts (clumsily I might add) to “enhance” one of the structures. Engineering degree he has not, but anyone could see what was about to happen and sure enough the stack of rocks that once was a sentinel cairn is now a strewn pile lined across the beach. 

So it begins. A masterpiece in the making which is recorded during construction, videoed and snapped in situ with its creator at completion. Some sort of positive result for the days outing.

We wander back to the van park, tails between our legs (and not for the first time). Its Saturday afternoon and groups of vanners are gathering around vans, talking, drinking and otherwise taking in each others company. We are no different, its happy hour for us and we gather around the Silver Leader van for chips and dips on the weather deck. 

Tonight Forbsy has the spatula. He has whipped up some chicken enchiladas for dinner. Robyn will be adding vanilla bean panna cotta to the repast all finished with Salted caramel rum liquor soaked mandarin. The enchiladas come in three versions, mild, hot and jalapenoed. I choose the jalapeno version and enjoy it and the panna cotta.

Talk turns to why some vanners go to the same place each time every year. Forbsy and Silver Leader and Rose each year go to Hat Head with a group which includes the Missing Link and they have been doing this for in excess of 20 years. Their children have grown up knowing this was an integral part of their journey.

For Robyn and I this type of vanning (or holidaying) is a palace from our pasts we do not want to visit. Yes there are very pleasant memories of places like Batehaven on the New South Wales south coast where we the Banks family had their “annuals” each year, but there is so little time and so much to explore and now we are “empty nesters”. The time for raising children has past and for us, we started with very little, built up our nest egg over many years of hard work. 

Dont get me wrong, we did what we set out to do, our children came first, we both spent lots of time involved in their education from the periphery, involved in P&C, School Councils and being “that parent” on school excursions, being that parent sho was the scout leader etc but all the while, as my children all suggest, working too hard. None of my children had any thoughts of following in their fathers footsteps into the “family” business. My oldest worked for me 4 times and was sacked 3 of them and the 4th time his extra curricular activities got in the way so much he decided to concentrate on them. 

Their ethic for work comes from the examples we as parents set, but we always allowed their passion to take them in a direction of their making. I suspect anyone reading my ramblings would suggest I am proud of my children. The work they do in their chosen fields has their passion wrapped up in everything they do.

I love what I did as an accountant, but simply being an accountant is not what I am. Robyn is the same, her passion, sometimes seen as something that is infecting her, is actually her greatest strength, if only those around, who may have slotted her into a genre of their own prejudice, would or could only see.

I suspect there are a lot of people out there who have a lion inside ready to roar, only to have the “gatekeepers”, those who believe they know better, slotting them into the round holes of convention, when really they should be allowed to nurture the square peg rather than rasp it round.

I don’t think we will ever be “Hat Head” types. We may visit and spend a day with them from time to time, but if we are not “green and growing, we are ripe and rotting” a quote from a great mentor of mine Dale Beaumont. We are certainly not the type of people to let moss grow on us rolling stones.

If we are not travelling, we live in an idyllic destination. From my kitchen table I look out over a lake, the ocean and view Seal Rocks Lighthouse. Although our visitors are few and far between, we are close enough to our children (and anyone else who chooses to visit), and have plenty of room to accommodate our family and friends. We are of an age where the word retirement surrounds us, but we are too active of mind to take on the vegetation of those waiting to leave the mortal realm.

With that, probably too much of the alcoholic libations under our belts and a great dinner, its time for bed.