Sunday 8th June 2014
Well Great Keppel Island.
(Well great Keppel you suck, we just walked over Mount Everest , to get milk and the shop was closed and then we thought we would take the easy way back and had to climb over rocks and cliffs, after about 5kms or so we finally drag our sorry arses back to the dingy, only to have to drag it out waist deep over breaking waves to get back to the boat.)
This is my status on facebook yesterday, I guess it says it all...haha
Of cause you are now going to hear the full version, if nothing else our adventures gives us something to write about, but man. I so wish we had some with a little less pain.
Let me go back a bit first, we left Hummocky Island, around 9am and made it too Great Keppel Island around 1.30am, or if you want to be politically correct it's called Wapparaburra, now try saying that quick...haha
But we are not big on all the political clap trap, so let's just call it Great Keppel, or if I was going to be real Aussie it would be called Kep, as we shorten every name we can possible shorten..haha
Anyway we made it to Great Keppel, and we are low on milk, now I know we can have UHT milk, but that makes me want to throw up, I hate the stuff, we do have powdered milk and if you mix it with freezing cold water it almost comes close to real milk, but still it takes some getting use to.
We have a book on board which is almost like the Sailors Bible, it's written by a Guy called Alan Lucas, he has charted almost all the Australian coast, and gives you all kinds of info about how to come in and out of places without getting into trouble, like hitting rocks, coral reefs etc... and also what's on islands and such, just little bits and pieces of everything.
We follow it all the time and so far so good until yesterday.
He said there was this little walkway over to the other side of the island and they have a small shop, that sells milk and bits and pieces.
As I recall we had three choices, take the dingy there, walk along the beach, or take the walking track.
I'm not sure who's dumb idea it was to take the walking track but that's what we did.
It started out pleasant walking through the bush and around a lake that was all dried out, we dodged mud potholes kept a lookout for moving logs, (Crocs) and actually enjoyed our bit of much needed exercise.
All was fine and dandy until we came around a corner and was faced with a mother of all mothers Mountain, and yeap that's the way the track was tacking us.
Now I'm not one to back down on challenges but this was taking it to the extreme, I took one look at it and said you got to be kidding me, let's go back, the powdered milk was looking real good by then, hell I'll even drink my coffee black.
But no being the dump arses that we are we decided to take it on, man was it hard, I whinged and bitched the whole way, and had to stop about every 5mins or so to give my legs a rest.
We finally make it to the top of Everest only to realise it was not done with us yet, we still had more climbing to go, I just looked at this and wanted to cry, if only I had the energy, I would have.
Finally after what felt like hours we made it to the top, and talk about a steep descend
We almost needed brakes to get down it.
There was little sign posts along the way and we followed these to the resort as that's were the shop was located.
The walk down was really nice and we went past an old resort that was shut down and just overrun by foliage, it was actually sad to see it, actually the whole place is very run down, except one area they have spruced it up some, but personally I would not want to spend a holiday here.
So we get to where the shop is puffing and panting and the damn thing is not only closed but for sale.
Will not even go into the conversation that took place here, but there was a lot of pirate language and hating on Alan Lucas.
We decided that we were not going to tackle Everest again, we were going to take the easy way back along the beach.
There are about three beaches that we knew we had to walk along before we could get back to the dingy, each one is a mile or so long, no problem we could see little rock outcrops between them we can climb over those easy.
Well let me tell you each little rock outcrop was like climbing up and down the side of the Grand Canyon, when we got to the third one I seriously considered swimming.
My feet where hurting so bad, hell who am I kidding my whole Body was hurting bad, swimming had to be easier than this.
We eventually made it back to the dingy only to be faced with waves crashing on shore, we had dragged the dingy up a fair way onto the beach.
The plan was to drag it back into the water and I'd climb in and The Captain would push us out over the waves and then jump in and we would row out a bit into deeper water where we could then start the motor and get back to the boat.
Well, we dragged the dingy back to the water with the last of our strength got it into the water and realised our plan was not gonna work so we both pushed it out to waste deep over the breaking waves and kinda climbed, fell on board.
We made it to the boat and had to tackle a huge swell to get back on the boat and just collapsed on the deck.
After some strong pain killers, a warm shower, a few wines and a bit to eat we finally managed to get back to our old selves as long as we didn't move too much, the pain is manageable...hahaha
Well tomorrow is another Day.