March 31, 2003. Opal Mining Update - No 12 Back in Bramston Beach again and 1 Week to Go!

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That Time Again Folks, And this last week has gone quick. Monday Mar 17, We got early again, along with a couple of other people that was waiting to get through to Karumba to go fishing, we heard that the Dead Mans Creek was down to .6 of a meter (2 foot) as the tide was going out and the creek was dropping, so along with the others we went off at 7.30am to see if we could get through, this below is a photo of the second creek that we could not see on the first day as it was further on past the first one we could not cross at that time as it was 1 Meter deep (3 foot) this photo is taken after I had got through, there was a car behind me on the other side that was having a look at me going through but he turned back deciding that it was still to deep for him at that time.

Here we at last at Karumba in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Here is the local Golf Club with some of the local residents keeping the grass down.

By 9.00am these are all back in the bush, resting in the tall grasses in the shade until late afternoon.

We were in a cabin next to a Professional Mud Crabber, I asked him if I could take a photo of one of his mud crabs for you, this is a Classic spur of the moment photo, Pat did not want to hold this at all, but I talked her into it, as I was getting ready to take the pic, the crab grabbed her hand with one of its a swimmer fins, you can see it under her hand and so I got a better photo than planed, the crabs can crush your finger if it gets hold of it in its claws as these are very powerful claws as you can see.

These are ready for shipping out to Cairns by Truck and from there they go by plane overnight to Sydney to be sold at the fish markets, these crabs are highly sort after for there taste and are Exported all over the world, I bought 4 of these the morning before we left.

Tuesday Mar 18, We stayed another day just to relax and soak up some sunrays which we have not see to much off lately, give Pat a chance to wind down some and take her mind off the past few weeks. Wednesday Mar 19, We are now on the way out of Karumba and back to Bramston Beach, here we came across another of the local wildlife, this is a Brolga Crane, this is also the national symbol for the Northern Territory.

Here you can see the road is just wide enough for one vehicle and this is the Major Highway up here, but I am happy to say that it is only in places and not for the whole distance, when another vehicle approaches you both move half off the road to pass each other.

Another of the local wildlife, there was a couple of Emu's on the side of the road, but it is hard to get them to stay still when you pull up to take a photo as they frighten very easily, these started to run almost straight away but I thought it was worth a quick pic to show you what you can see while driving through the outback, you do get to see many Animals here but may not get to take a photo of them.

This is a large Ant Hill that you can see in certain places along the road, these are not everywhere up but in certain places why this is I do not know, in Western Australia up in the Kimberly's we have the Magnetic Ant Hills, they are called this because the ants make the nests facing North and South so the sun warms the nest during the day as it passes over from East to West, these nests are pointed at the top unlike these and can get to well over 10 foot high, the nest you see here can also be made by the Termites, I don't know how to tell the difference, but there must be one I'm sure.

We are now back in Bramston Beach and this time Pat does not mind holding up a couple of the crabs that we bought in Karumba, we bought 4 of these for $20.00 each which is not a bad price at all, they sell at the Markets for $20.00 a kilo and that is the Crabbers Price so we bought these at Wholesale price, the 2 you see here weigh in at 1.5 kilo each and the other 2 are 1 kilo each.

This is just to let you see what they look like from the top, very powerful crabs if you are wondering why they have there claws tied like this, its because of two reasons, the first is that they are all males, and the males will fight with each other if they get the chance and then claws etc will be broken off, reducing he price of the crab, females are not allowed to be taken at any time as they must be left to breed the next generation, second think of your own hands and fingers, there have been known to cause quite a lot damage to the human hand, fingers have been taken off by there claws.

Thursday Mar 20, Went back into Cairns to get Anchor Roller fitted to the front of the boat to protect the paint somewhat and to make it easier to pull in the anchor for me when in deep water, the weather forecast for tomorrow is good so we should be out fishing. Friday Mar 21, Got everything ready and was on our way to the boat ramp by 7.30am, still a bit later than I would like but as I have no alarm clock I have to get ready when the birds wake me up. This is one of the Franklin Islands here and this one is called Round Island we are going to fish just off from it, we tried some fishing half way between here and the river mouth but did no good and as the weather was calming down more, we thought we would go out to this Island as one of the locals said that he has caught Corral Trout here and in shallow water.

This Island is one although it looks like two, but there is a sandbar that joins them together and this one is called Russell Island and is to the right of the Round Island, as you can see the weather is great.

This Island is to the left of the Round Island and is called Mabel Island and behind this is another Island called Normandy there are some small reefs around here, but this year we do not have time to look around so we will be back next year, all being well.

This is the view back to the mouth of the river which is the gap in the middle of the photo.

This is what you have been waiting for, a FISH, believe it or not at last a FISH, look below.

Once again Patricia gets into the act, yes Patricia caught this little beauty, this is what we came here for the Spangled Emperor, these are a very nice eating fish among many others, if the weather holds out for the next 3 days we might catch some more of these if we are lucky.

Patricia is not happy that she has sun cream on her face in this photo, but I wish it was me that caught it, she also caught another small one of these that was thrown back as it was undersize, but this is a nice sized fish and the first Rod Bender that we have caught this trip, so she has christened the boat at last and the new fishing rod she is using, this weighed in at just under 3 kilo. (6.5 lbs)

This I think is a member of the Wrasse Family, to small and thrown back, we caught a few that was thrown back for being undersize of different kinds of fish, but I will take more pics next time.

This is the Famous Corral Trout, it is one of the top eating fish to be caught in these waters, but his was also undersize by 2 centimeters (3/4 inch) so was thrown back, perhaps we will be more lucky newt time, we were also bitten off a few times with sharks, so I will set up for them next time out.

Pat doe's enjoy her fishing and I am happy that at last we are on the water doing what we came for so many weeks ago, this fish is called a stripy and was thrown back as it was undersize, as I said I will take some more pics next time out so you can the Varity of Fish and colors here.

As we were having such a good time at last the time got away from us and we started back late from the Islands, getting back to the river mouth at low tide, I did not look at the tide chart for today and the tide was a low one, but I did not realize that it affected the river so much. The water was so low in places, that we actually got stuck on a sandy bottom, the water was less that a foot deep at this point, this was very easy to get off as I was only crawling along, but as I went further along trying to find deeper water, which I did, but as we were trying to find out way up the river to the boat ramp we damaged the prop. We came upon some deep water (7 feet) this the only problem with a Echo Sounder, that it is at the back of the boat, so when it tells you that you are in shallow water the bow is already in it or in trouble, anyway as I came upon this deep water I went a bit faster and all of a sudden the motor hit something hard and jumped up, it turns out that as I was going past a creek that feeds into the river and not being a local I did not know the channel in the river. This I found out when I finally got back to the boat ramp and was talking to a local that was just putting his dingy in and I explained to him what had happened, he told me that a lot of them had hit the rocks there before they learnt, so I have learnt a lesson here, a $270.00 Lesson.

Saturday March 22, I had to go back into Cairns again on today to get a new prop, which I said cost us $270.00, should have been $340.00 but as I had bought the boat and a lot of the extras there, they felt sorry for us, but it cost us a days fishing which we could not afford at this stage as the time is running out for us. The weather forecast for tomorrow is very good, as was today but we missed out on that, so we will just have to see if we can hit a good spot where the fish are biting, as there is only two days left for us now, it seems a life time ago that we started on this trip, but now the good weather is here, we have to go home soon, does not seem fair somehow, but that's life, have to roll with the punches, eh! Sunday March 23, Went out fishing at 7.15 this morning, and what a morning is was, very calm and no wind at all, not even a breeze, we got to the boat ramp, the tide was on the way in and high tide was at 12.35pm, when we got to the river mouth, which is 7kms (4.35 miles) from the boat ramp, not sure if I told you that before. The sea was pretty calm and this time the tide was not low enough to worry us a great deal, but I had now been told about the channel in the river and how to read it, so I should not have that pop problem again next year, anyway as soon as I was out of the river mouth and into the sea, the death is still only 6 feet at this point, I open up the throttle and headed for the islands, some 13kms away.

It took us 20 minutes to get there in this good sea, and I headed for the spot where we had caught the fish two days before, the sea was getting calmer by the minute and even as we were getting the bait and hooks ready, the sea was becalmed and was like a sheet of glass. There was a lot of boats out there having a ball on a day like this and being a Sunday and not having such good weather for a while, they were taking advantage of it, but as for fishing, NOT a BITE did not matter where I tried, and there was fish down there, but no bites. I have fished in sea's like this before and we have never had the fish bite until the sea has a chop on it and this did not happen until 12.30pm, now we had made our minds up to leave at 2.00pm so we would not have any trouble with tide in the river like on Friday, as the low tide today was at 7.00pm, which would leave plenty of water in the river for us to get in with. But as the fish started to bite late we decide to leave again at 3.00pm, we had quite a few bites and I hooked a Mackerel and got it to the top of the water, but it went around one of our other lines and I let the line go slack and off it went, Pat hooked into a couple of big ones again but one did not get hooked and the other took her into a snag and broke her off, I had one more good bite but did not hook the fish. All in all we did catch a few small Corral Trout and a couple of other small stuff, not worth a photo, except for the small Sea Snake that Pat caught, but did not bring home a fish for the table, so it was a very good day weather wise, but as for fishing it was a disaster, tomorrow will be our last day for catching fish, so its all or nothing tomorrow.

This is the Snake, I have no idea what name it is, as there are many kinds of sea snakes but as far as I know they are all deadly and best not take chances as it is a sea snake and I handled it with care.

This is a side shot of it, was about 2.5 foot long and I  took it off with my long nose fishing pliers.

This a Crocodile Trap that has been placed just across from the boat ramp in the river as one has been seen hanging around, so they will try to catch it and move it some where there is no people around, they do not kill them anymore and are protected, the depth of the water where I took this photo is 2 feet, but is 7 foot across to the right in front of the boat ramp.

Monday Mar 24, We got to go fishing again this morning for the last time and the weather is perfect, when we got in the sea there was a very nice chop on it and it stayed like that all day, here is one of the small fish we caught, this one is called a Half Moon Fish, because as the tail is spread, the yellow bar in the tail is in the shape of a Half Moon, nice little fish to eat.

Another of the many varieties of fish here, but I don't know the name of this one as yet.

This is a Long Spined Snapper, can grow to be 2 kilo in weight, this is a lot smaller than that.

This as a small Travelly and not to bad to eat if you have caught nothing else, we call them a neighbors fish, because when you come home you give them to the neighbors as a present.

This little fish is very red as you can see, but has some serious spikes on it, it got me 3 times with them, you cannot see here but there are spikes on its mouth just above its lips and a big one on the side of its head just below the fin, a huge anal spine, it belongs to the Squirrelfish Family.

We did not catch anything big this time out, a bit disappointing as this was out last day here fishing, but that is fishing, the weather was just great today for fishing and we thought we would get a few big ones, but this was not the case, so we hope they will get bigger for next year when we will be back. When I got back the house that I am staying at, we started to clean down the boat and get things ready for packing up, Pat noticed that the Jerry Can that had 20 liters of diesel in it was gone, it seems that some Bastard had wrenched the lock off with I think a tire lever, this happened at the boat ramp where the vehicle's and trailers are left unattended all day while the owners are out fishing, I never thought the jerry can would have been a target for a Thief as it is not worth a lot and the 20 liters of diesel was only worth about $18.50 here.

Tuesday Mar 25, Here the boat is getting packed for the trip home, you can see how we put the Sun Cover down in the boat for the trip home and for the next 10.5 months until our next holidays, all that is left now is to put 3 fishing tackle boxes in and to put the tie down strap on and fit the storm cover and we are ready.

Wednesday Mar 26. This is how she looks with the storm cover on, we are now on the road and ready for home.

Sunday March 30, We are home at last and the trip went smooth except for the engine running a bit hot, but I will get the radiator checked out within the next couple of weeks to see if that is that is the problem, nice to see that things went well for a change and now that we are back our luck might change for the best.

It will take me a couple of days to get things ready to go out on the field again, I have to check the mining truck over and make sure that the battery is fully charged, which I will put on charge tomorrow as I have Pat's car battery on charge right now until tomorrow morning. Remember that I was cleaning out the rest of the dirt from the last shot and had just put the large 90% elbow on underground, I will have to clean up that last shot that I did not do a good job with and then we will be in Business again for some more Opals I hope. Again I Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some more good photos to show you in the next issue and maybe some of Good Looking Opal and lots of it, I am still hoping that this will be a good year for us in mining, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world as far as Opal Mining goes. Stay Tuned for next weeks Issue, who knows what I will have to report. Until the next issue......... and wish me lots of LUCK. Cya Later, Stuart Bird. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here!

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