let 'em eat crab!

We left Rosslyn Bay on the 30th March at 0815 with near perfect weather. Winds SE 5-10kts and seas of 1.5m-oh well no wind! The journey up the coast was fantastic, with lots to see.

coast with fishing boat

 

5 rocks at Byfield National park

We planned to stop for a few days at Port Clinton which is on the border of the Shoalwater Defence Training Area. We knew we had until April 8th in this area before it was closed for military exercises.

Port Clinton is a deepwater natural harbour and in 1980 Lang Hancock, the West Australian mining magnate, wanted to build a coal port, the proposal of course, was blessed by the Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It was vigorously resisted by conservationists, many of them local residents in the Byfield area, and vetoed by the Commonwealth Government.

Again in 2008 a group of developers wanted to build a coal port at Port Clinton (which is also the water catchment area for the Capricorn Coast) where they expected to move 50 million tons of coal for export.  

The Minister for the Environment Peter Garrett announced his rejection of the proposal on the grounds that the impact of the proposed development would have significant and adverse impact on matters of national environment significance. God bless you Labor.

yep, lets build a coal port here!

We anchored in a lovely spot, passing dolphins, turtles and three other boats. Fabulous.

our anchorage

We spent four days here, relaxing, reading, fishing and working on the bloody generator which started to billow smoke.

BOM issued a securite for thunderstorms with wind gusts to 45kts, so with the closure in mind (the area is known as a cyclone hole) we decided we should head further north.

Just before we left, some fishermen knocked on our hull and gave us some ENORMOUS mud crabs along with cooking tips. They must have known we caught no fish!