Boyd Bay

Having had enough of city life we motored down the coast to Boyd Bay to wait for some wind to carry us across the gulf. It seems the entire coast of Australia from Darwin to Brisbane is becalmed! We’ve now had about 10 days of no wind.

On our mine tour they mentioned that a deep water port for shipping out the Bauxite was pegged for development at Boyd Bay starting early next year. Luckily due to the economic downturn it looks like this may be postponed. Good thing too, as this bay is really special – a favourite of mine so far within the gulf.


The wildlife in Boyd Bay was overwhelming – fish surrounded the boat, turtles floated past, dolphins playing in the calm, dugongs, stingrays and shove noses, birds including sea eagles and egrets, bats playing on our rigging at night, pigs, cattle and crocs were around. We went for a 2 hour walk along the coastline and found many tracks in the sand – mainly pigs rooting around for whatever they could scavenge. We discovered turtle tracks leading up the beach to hole where they had laid eggs. Unfortunately all that was left was a few egg shells as the pigs had rudely pigged out.

With a bit of time on our hands, Si had the great idea of setting a pig trap as our contribution to saving the turtle nests. Sounded easy enough! The plan was to find a good sapling to bend over, peg it down, bait it with some food, an old fishing net from the shore underfoot roped to the sapling… and the pig was ours. Just like in the movies. Si scaled a cliff to lasoo a sapling but the sapling had the last laugh and Simon ended up with a bruised butt. Sore and sweaty and covered in sand we admitted defeat and returned to the boat.

I also had my first croc experience at Boyd Bay. Walking along the shore I rounded a small undulation in the sand to come face to face with a 2 metre croc 10 feet away from me. He was just as startled as I and turned to me with jaws wide to size me up. Luckily he decided I was to big to take down, turned and dived into the water and was about 200 metres away before I could even draw breath. I’ll definitely be treading more carefully along the shoreline now. I’m not sure what would have happened had it been a 4-6 metre croc???