Sunday and all is better

Kowanyama Sunset at the beach while barra and crab fishing

The week began with a plane flight - first of many. We were very pleased to see a plane land in Lockhart, so we could continue the journey. Three days of watching the clouds descends over the airstrip was not amusing after the first minute. We did make the most of the time, revisiting Chilli Beach and have tours through the rainforests in the rain.

On arrival in Cairns we did a rushed emergency shop for the next journey and then went to the shed to repack the computers and boxes for the Kowanyama- Pormpuraaw leg. Stayed at the Holden's over night and enjoyed a nice dinner, a bottle of wine ( real treat) and a great conversation. We did a change of printer and then a huge rush to the airport Tuesday morning, only to wait for hours to find out the plane had been cancelled. Luckily the put us up at a pub for the night and Paul had a couple of Guiness's. Was nice and I had time to shop for a belt and some food to take with us. We knew we needed to cook somewhere for Kowanyama, cause the guest house is crude to say the least. Cause we had the weekend delay in Lockhart, we did not get any cooking done or even a shop in a super market. So I did get a few things, even some new coffee and soy milk. It's the little things that count.

Life in a 1 metre shed. We repack on the floor and store the excess.

Fishing in Pormpuraaw while keeping a healthy lookout for croc slides

Finally got to Pormpuraaw on Wednesday and people were great forgiving us for not arriving on Monday. Pormpuraaw is right on the beach so we finally got some fine weather and an early workshop finish. While Paul fished, I took photos of shells and beach sand patterns to use as backgrounds in the digital scrapbooking activities we do.

Friday afternoon we headed off in the 30 minute flight to Kowanyama and we met at the airport by Rachel and Matthew and also Renee. From no-one to meet at at Pormpuraaw where we had to catch the community bus, we had two offers. Met lots of great folk at the airport and all seems positive and organised for the week.

TB, thought you might like some pics of Rachel, Matthew and the new dogs to see how they are all going.

Shelfo on Sunday

Had a great weekend. Rachel and Matthew have been wonderful hosts. Saturday night was a campfire and camp oven experience on the beach after an amazing walk and then a fish. Paul caught a small barra and I caught a catfish and a couple of big crabs. Rachel has the dogs trained to did for crab, so we used them for bait. Crabs obviously like eating their littler cousins.

Brolgas - part of the wonderful bird life everywhere

Venus crabbing for bait

Sunday, we went out to Shelfo where we can swim, more or less croc free and we made a new fire. Rachel made bread in the camp oven and we made jaffles with the curries we brought. All very delicious. Swum in the creek and just floated down the river, until the little fish and crays started nibbling the toes. Wonderful scenery. We will camp there next trip.

Paul checked out the road where we will need to drive in a month. it looks like a scary crossing to me, but he thinks he will be able to do it. When the locals turn around.....

Campfires and jaffles and bread

Ended the weekend with a great drive back through the bush. the bird life is amazing - swarms of corellas, galahs and lots of brolga groups. Also saw a wonderful display of pelicans polaying the thermals and black kites. Just the most beautiful creatures in flight, feeding and on the ground.

Sunsets on the cape. Worth the wait.

Sunday and all is well

Paul is cooped up and bored.

Another day waiting for a plane to arrive. It is raining heavily now and the roads are bogging up. Paul, local Deputy CEO took us for a drive today to the waterfalls and waterholes on the Coen road and as the day went on the roads got stickier. Some of the local tourists found how sticky it was with rather spectacular slides into the creek.

Paul and Larnie took us to an outstation and we wandered around the waterfalls, waterholes and creeks for a while. What a delight. It was very gray and hard to photograph in the rain, but we got some good shots.

The afternoon was uneventful with the cooking of a communal curry and the drop in of Mark the pilot - yes ironic but true. While we are stranded, a helicopter arrives. he is staying the night and maybe one of us who will remain nameless was shamelessly trying to get an early lift back.

It will be nice to come back to Lockhart in the fine weather to really take photographic advantage of all we have seen this weekend.



The weather looks no better till Wednesday and there is no plane Wednesday, so........ could be a long week.

Stranded in Lockhart

More pics at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/shellyw39/StrandedAtLockhart

Beaming out to the girls and their laptops from the front railing

The weekend began on Friday with the plane not landing. It was too rough apparently to come in. It was rather gray to the ground and windy, but you know.......... So, we get to stay in Lockhart for a few days until the weather clears which seems unlikely and we get to delay the trip to Pormpuraaw.So this has been the view for the weekend. The cabins we are staying in are at the airport and with no plane on the tarmac, it looks a bit dismal. Mind you, some small charters arrived and went but the SkyTrans big bird was not game enough to come in.

The view

So we are camped in, with the wonderful cook Hannah off for the weekend. Which leaves us to camp cook for ourselves. She did supply some food and we have rationed out and pooled what we can. Tonight is rissoles and potato in gravy, followed by locally picked pineapple and coconut. Annie gave Michelle Coconut husking lessons, so there is dessert for dinner.

There is Paul, Michelle, Annie and Vicki passing the time until the weather clears, making the best of it.

New best friends Michelle and Annie

Today we went for an "outing", up to Portland Roads and Chilli Beach. It was a gray old day though and not a lot of photography opportunities. Portland road has six houses and a hall. It is supposed to have a cafe but it was closed for the weekend too. Would have been good to have coffee, not that we knew about the cafe before we went. Not a lot to say about Portland Roads really. There was a few tourists about - 6 I think, not counting us.

Portland Roads

Chilli Beach is my favourite spot in the world, but today it was very gray and quite dirty. Lots of rubbish on the beach at the moment which is a pity. It was right in the middle of coral spawning too which made for a bit of a smell, but it was good to see. The wind was quite strong and so we did not dally long on the beach. The rainforest was beautiful but and we all got to see and smell the good bits.

Chilli Beach in the gray

I hope Paul gets to see Chilli Beach in the sun one day. Tis an amazing combination of blues and sand colours against the reefs when it is fine and calm. I guess we woulod not be stranded by weather and have a good beach day. The thong trees are still there and a new toothbrush forest amused the last 500 tourists. Very clever.

Annie doing email - what is under that towel?

The journey back was lots of bad jokes and an odd good one, along with the odd exciting ride over cattle grids to keep Annie happy. Vibrations work!

Toothbrush Forest

So the weekend is about amusing ourselves, communal cooking and keeping up the online comms. Paul has the wireless network beaming out and Annie uses a cable to connect from the steps. Vicki is connected on one of the workshop laptops over the other side and we teckies do our usual social networking. (which is we all sit together the silently type away talking to the rest of the world)



Internet access is better than phone access. Paul found Qantas a bit slow when we were trying to rearrange the flight schedules for next week, so took a chair up to the back of the ute. He wanted me to drive him round till he found access......

Well folks - more adventures tomorrow - waterfalls and bush road are the agenda.

Boigu Island

The flight in was terrific, given this little place is on the edge of a very healthy wetlands just off New Guinea. It is home to cray, crab and many fish, as well as the very warm Boigu islanders.
If anyone from Boigu wants these photos emailed to them for use, please say so, we did this for you. We do have a few more.


Congratulations to Lloyd and the Boigu Council team. The place looked terrific. It was clean and the new houses look great. The whole place felt good.


On arrival we went for a walk round town and quickly were adopted by two kids. They took us down to see the crocodile. It was quite funny when two other kids came to join the crew, and the first little fella, said "go away, these are my people". Such is the welcome and trust. It turned the kids belonged to Norena, one of our participants and local organisers, so we had a chance to meet her. We soon met many participants for the workshops and knew the workshops would go well.

Internet banking is a real need here and on most islands. It costs folks $30 to make a transfer - that's too much. If nothing else we save folks $30-$60 a month so they can help their kids away at school.

We gave the camera to some of the workshop participants and it was great to pick up the island stories from their perspective. This is why we travel to places and work locally, so we learn more and respect more about what we learn.

Tree of Spy

We were amazed at the computer literacy of the local children. We had several call in one day when the teachers were on strike. The school is doing a great job, something we told Don when we saw him.

Afternoons after the workshop are always an adventure. On this day we saw lots of New Guinea folks from Buzi Village, waiting till after dark to go back to New Guinea after shopping for supplies on Boigu. It is amazing to me to have folks travel by a tinnie and small outboard to another Country, but when it is only a km....

The visiting nurse told us the next day, that folks wait till after dark so that there are less mozzies when they arrive home. Denghi fever and other diseases are so bad on the bottom area of New Guinea, that people do what they can to keep their children safe. She told us terrible tales of children who had died from fevers because the seas were too rough to make the crossing to come over and get a dollars worth of medicine.

Moving to load the boats in very low light caused this effect.

The jetty in daylight pointing to New Guinea.

Travelling to Boigu

Will on the outside and Paul inside.

Since we could not get the plane we wanted, Will the pilot always had some fun trying to fit in our gear. Paul had to climb into the plane and push from one direction, while Will pushed our gear in the side door. How the little plane managed to take off is amazing.

Naked lady

We were told about the naked lady... and so here she is in all her glory. The locals love her and made sure we knew about her before we left.

The weather was a little cloudier this leg, but boy did we get some wonderful views. The reefs off Darnley and towards Stephen Island are just spectacular. I reckon Stephen Island must need a BIA project.

Stephen Island Reefs in all their glory

Saibai Island

Saibai is a place I have visited before. It still amazes me the community is coping with the sea level rises. I have been there when the high tide flooded the school grounds and stranded the preschoolers in their building and many islanders were stranded at the shop. It looks so vulnerable from the air. A small village clinging to the last bit of beach by its toes. The island is very large and the one strip of houses just looks so fragile. Many Saibai folks were relocated to Bamaga some time ago. As it turned out, we heard more of the story two weeks later. I included this photo here for the Bamaga folks. Paul was on the other side of the plane taking photos of New Guinea while I was looking over Saibai.

Dauan Island, off Saibai

Dauan Island holds a fond memory for me. It's where I was stranded one weekend and wrote the submission for ACEC 2006. Its a spec off Saibai with an amazingly inspirational beach. The kinda place you might go to to write your PHD...

The photos on approach to Boigu deserve a blog entry of their own. Will opened the window for me and I shot as many photos as I could without the perspect clouding the images.

Darnley Island - one of the Eastern Jewels

Darnley is pretty nice hey. This was given to us by one of the participants.

Paul phoning his mum is the afternoon light

Beaches at low tide

Paul being himself while helping out the Darnley girls

This is why we work with folks.
The team on Darnley were nonstop learners.

We loved Darnley. The team were so welcoming to us and presented with a beautiful gift when we left. We promised to stay the weekend next time so we can get in a fish and also to swim on the most amazing sand beaches. If this is the beginning of this project, we can't wait for the rest.

Thanks Tash for coming with us too.

Travelling to Darnley

The Horn Island Jetty - relaxing before the big journey east

Travelling to Darnley Island

The journey out to Darnley Island on Monday was amazing. It was so fine and clear and the weather was perfect for flying. It was a photographers delight.

We started out at Horn Island after a frantic repack. Will the pilot, our new best friend began a week long adventure with us for the first part of the BIA Program travel. He was very patient with our need to photograph.

Horn Island Airport

The views of Horn island were rather neat. The island is quite large and next visit we will have to go and do the cache. It was at the opposite end of the island to where we were. Horn has a good collection of vegetation diversity in one small place.

Horn Island Wilderness

The jewels of the Torres Straits were on show today. We could not stop taking photos and staring out the window. It would have to be the best flight I have ever had.

The reefs and islands of the Torres Straits

The views of the communities along the way was fascinating. You can't help but wonder what it would be like to live so far away from the mainland, where there is nothing to worry about except the tides and fishing. We loved flying over Stephen Island where the reefs extend for miles. You can only get to Stephen island by Helicopter. they must need computer workshops. See our online Albums for more pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/shellyw39/TravellingToDarnleyIsland

Reefs off Stephen Island

The reward was the arrival at Darnley Island



This is the best way to have a retirement I tell you. Better go - work to do.