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JANUARY 10 , 2008 |
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| CLARENCE RIVER |
December 11, 2007- January 10, 2008 We stayed at the public jetty in Maclean for the three days that we were allowed at one time. Bill left for Brisbane early Monday morning and we settled in to regular boat maintenance and Christmas preparation. The inside of the boat was once again decorated as a ‘winter fairyland’ with the white lights and fake snow. Mary limited herself to only playing Christmas music for the month of December as Paul has a Christmas music saturation point and Mary does not! Mid-morning on the 11th , while Mary was on the boat and Paul was shopping in Maclean, a man came to the jetty and introduced himself to Mary as Graham Orams, a journalist from the two local newspapers. Graham asked if he could interview us for the papers and Mary asked him to return later that afternoon when Paul would be available as well. A few hours later, over cups of tea, we spent an enjoyable session talking with Graham about how we came to be on the Clarence River. He was quite interested in hearing about how we prepared for over ten years to become liveaboards and our travels over the past three years. Our description of how we changed our lifestyle and followed our “long-range cruising plan” in order to afford Bella Via was of particular interest to Graham as he admitted that he had immediately assumed when he saw the boat that we came from wealthy backgrounds. We so enjoyed talking with Graham that we made a point of dropping into the newspaper office every few days to say hello. We even invited Graham and his wife to Bella Via for our New Year’s eve celebration but they were unable to make it. During our stay on the Clarence we made a point of participating in local events. On December 13, we walked to the showgrounds to attend a bagpipe band practice. This was a small group of only 4 people but, boy, could they make wonderful noise. Two nights later we attended a Carols by Candlelight service at the catholic high school, which we very much enjoyed. We well remembered from last year that there is a huge amount of musical talent in Maclean, disproportionately so for the population. This, we have been told by many people, is because of the music program which is connected to the high school. At the Carols by Candlelight service, we were delighted to see many of the musicians that we saw at the Christmas Eve Mass last year. The vocalists were outstanding, especially a young man who, just a few days before, had won a talent competition in Sydney and has just been awarded a spot at the prestigious NIDA, the National Institute for Dramatic Arts. As someone put it, “he will be discovered soon!”. On Sunday morning, we walked to the catholic church and joined the choir for the 0830h Mass. We were warmly welcomed by the choir members and Sister Anne, the director. We were able to sing in the choir for the three Sundays that we were in Maclean and also for the outdoor Christmas Eve Mass under the big top. We probably won’t be back to the Clarence Valley in 2008 but, if we do, we know that we will be welcomed again by the choir. One of the highlights for Paul during our time on the Clarence River was his time spent on a prawn fishing boat. The prawn fishing season starts December 1 and lasts for 6 months. There are 60 prawn fishing boats on the river and they weave there way amongst anchored boats between 0700h and 1700h Monday to Friday. Paul went over in the dinghy one morning to speak to one of the fishermen and ended up being invited on board for a few hours. Paul returned a few hours later with a bucketful of cooked prawns and an invitation to join Captain Tony on the next Monday. Paul returned for his second day as a prawn fisherman and this time brought the camera.
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A net full of prawns and bycatch has just been dumped onto the sorting table by Captain Tony. Unfortunately the bycatch will include many small brim, flathead, herring, and manta ray. Not so unfortunately, very many catfish. On this day one of the manta ray was so large it covered half of the sorting table. Paul left it to Captain Tony to toss the rays back into the river. He does it as casually as one might pick up a kitten. Paul also learned how to avoid the spikes on the catfish, a big step for the new deckie (that’s what they call a deck hand). |
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After sorting, the prawns are almost immediately cooked in boiling river water for about three minutes. Paul should have had heavy rubber boots on for this job because the basket will drip boiling water as it is lifted out of the cooker. They will next be cooled with more river water, put on ice and stored in the ice box, which is the area underneath the sorting table. |
There’s about 75 kg of prawns in this net, a good haul after about an hour of dragging.
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For the first few days of our stay in Maclean there were very few boats on the river. On December 13 our friends Jim and Ann from Insatiable II came up the river for the Christmas season. Jim and Ann went further up river and moored at the private dock of the man who actually built their boat. We met these people, Gary and Sue McAulay and their sons Tyler and Rhys, last year and, together with Jim and Ann, we enjoyed a barbecue at the McAulays’ that evening. A few days later we enjoyed even more Clarence Valley hospitality as we attended a block party at the neighbours of the McAulays. We spent quite a bit of time with the McAulays during our time on the Clarence and very much enjoyed this family. Gary is building their next boat and the family plans on cruising the South Pacific again in 2009. We hope that our paths will cross. |
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Here is Gary with his two sons, Tyler (left) and Rhys, as the family arrives, during pouring rain, for dinner on Bella Via. |
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Here we are with Catherine from the Southern Cross after enjoying a turkey dinner on Insatiable II.
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We had the pleasure of another visit from Bob and Julia for a few days just after Christmas. Together we explored more of the town of Maclean and enjoyed a visit to an art gallery that featured Papua New Guinea contemporary art. |
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Cruising women will do anything to avoid the sun. Here are Ann (Insatiable II), Julia, and Mary standing in the shadow of a pole while the guys talk on, and on, and on…. |
Clarence River Goof-up #1! While at anchor early in our stay on the Clarence, we tried out a “two anchors in tandem” system. Strong winds were being predicted and there is a very strong current in the Clarence River. We felt that two anchors in tandem would give us better holding. We intended to make it a practice to reset the anchors every few days and one morning when we pulled the anchors up we found a huge knot of anchor. We went to the public jetty to straighten everything out and luckily, all was corrected without much fuss. That was the end of the tandem anchors in the Clarence! |
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Clarence River Goof-up #2. We always lock the dinghy when we tie up to the public jetty in Maclean. We have been warned repeatedly by the locals about vandals, although we have had no problems. On the evening of the Carols by Candlelight service we returned to the dinghy after dark and had a good laugh when we discovered that Paul had locked the dinghy but left the key in the lock!!! This is how we found the lock and key, thankfully, with the dinghy and motor still attached. |
Life on the Clarence River continues….. Our introduction to life in Maclean continued with attendance at a Rodeo on December 29. Together with Ann and Jim from Insatiable II and Catherine and Peter from The Southern Cross, we joined the throngs of people walking to the showgrounds for this annual event. Unfortunately, because of the scare of Equine Flu, there were no horses at this rodeo and the evening consisted of bull and steer riding. We enjoyed our first-ever rodeo, although it was uncomfortable sitting on a steep slope on a grassy hill for four hours.
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Here we see a junior cowboy attempting to stay on a bucking steer for 8 seconds. All of the parents in our group agreed we would not want our children doing this. The older cowboys ride horned bulls that buck and kick viciously. It is very distressing when the riders occasionally get bucked off and their hand remains caught in the rope that they were holding. The bull drags them violently around the ring until they can free themselves. It’s a very violent and dangerous sport. |
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Our last week and a half on the Clarence was spent battling nature. For all of that time, the entire New South Wales coast (and into Queensland) experienced gale-force winds of up to 40 knots. This wind created seas of up to 3-4 metres and surf of up to 4-5 metres. These huge seas thus created damaging surf conditions for the beautiful east coast. In fact, the bar at Yamba was deemed very dangerous for almost one week. We were very glad that we had no deadlines that would cause us to be seeking a weather window for travelling up or down the coast. We happily stayed put anchored in the river near Maclean. What we did do, is re-anchor on the Maclean side of the river which made us more sheltered from the strong southeast wind and we also set a stern anchor to stop us from swinging around at anchor in the strong current. The stern anchor worked very well for most of the time (read on…). It wasn’t only strong wind that we had to deal with – it poured rain for almost one week. This is the most rain that we have experienced in Australia in almost three years. Again, we remained comfortable at anchor during this rain, however, when the rain finally stopped things became a bit dicey. When that much rain is dumped in a river and surrounding lowlands, it has to go somewhere and go it did. We woke up on Sunday, January 6 to a few water hyacinths floating by the boat. This brought back memories of our stay on the Mary River in 2005. We also noted that the river was much higher than the day before. So then we started to wonder if we were in danger of the river flooding. Just before the ham radio net that morning, as we were preparing to leave the boat for church, Jim from Insatiable II told Paul that he and Ann had to cast off from Gary McAulay’s dock immediately as the dock was almost under water and the water was still rising. Mary was a bit nervous about leaving the boat for an hour but Paul thought that Bella Via would be okay while we were away at church, and he was right. We came back after church to more hyacinths and lots of debris floating downriver. We were pleased to see that the steady flow of debris was missing us, as we seemed to be just out of the strong current. That was earlier in the day! In late afternoon, with only one hour of daylight left, we noted that we were definitely in the path of the debris that was travelling down the river at the rate of 1.5 – 2 knots. We were starting to hear an occasional thump from logs and branches. Paul went up to the bow every few hours with our largest fishing gaff to pull the debris off of the chain. The bridle on the anchor chain at the bow and the bridle that was holding the stern anchor seemed to be most problematic as these created a funnel-like action and we were collecting lots of debris on chain, rope, props, keels, you name it! Paul ended up taking off the bridle at the bow and kept only one line to the stern anchor for the night. We also set our anchor watch alarm to wake us up if we moved 80 feet while we were sleeping.
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Some of the debris that we had to deal with after a week-long downpour of rain on the Clarence River. |
Here is Paul at the bow trying to remove debris from the anchor chain. We knew our largest fishing gaff would have other uses some day!
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The next morning, we decided to haul up our anchors and re-anchor on the other side of the river where it looked as though the amount of debris was much less. Nick from Thistle and Peter from The Southern Cross offered to help us retrieve our stern anchor and we accepted the extra hands. It took about 30 minutes with lots of time spent clearing away debris but it came up successfully. Before we lifted our primary anchor and went over to the other side of the river, Paul went over to Thistle to help Nick raise his stern anchor. That didn’t go as smoothly as the anchor was caught on a huge tree branch. Paul returned to Bella Via well over an hour later with the tree branch laying across the dinghy and he went to the shore to dump the branch.
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Here is Paul with the huge tree branch that caused Nick from Thistle a great deal of grief when he tried to lift his second anchor. |
We booked a Harwood bridge opening and headed back to Yamba at the mouth of the Clarence River. We will be hauled out at Yamba Marina on Friday, January 11 and we fly home to Canada on January 16 for a month’s visit with our family and friends.
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