Boongaree Island – mid to late October

We caught up with Barra B again and headed down to Boongaree Island to explore, fish and crab. This was uncharted territory not covered in any guides. To celebrate our wedding anniversary Robbie, Corrie and Ken from Barra B joined us for dinner. They brought with them some huge alfoil wrapped gifts decorated with little foil flowers! We opened them to find a whole celery, a bag of fruit and veg and a cask of wine! After weeks and weeks with no fresh food this was a real treat – thanks guys!

Unfortunately Ken got some bad news and had to travel back to Melbourne. A few sat phone calls later a rendevous was tee’d up. A helicopter came out to one of the deserted islands to pick him up – a private charter for the cool sum of $6k... the life of the rich and famous dairy farmers! We all headed over in the Barra B boats to say farewell. There was more than one sore head after the farewell party the night before!



We went along with Barra B crabbing and I learned how to tie a crab properly – invaluable life skills. We cooked them up later and ate some straight out of the cooker – delicious. We have a box in Barra B’s freezer with our name on it and I’m thinking Dad will love them when he comes to Darwin. I also got to go and watch the fishing at night, suited up in boots and overalls to guard against the jellies that are out in force now. These days were loads of fun with something happening all the time – fishing, crabbing, dinner, beers and traveling in convoy to the next hot spot.

We cruised around Boongaree with Barra B showing us all the top fishing spots, good anchorages and reefs and shoals to avoid. Sorry no maps – this is all top secret info. With Barra Ken gone we were now finding our own way with the fishing… and not doing too badly. Unfortunately while trying to land a Barra Simon became entangled with the lure and copped a treble hook through the side of his hand. While the wound was fresh we tried to get the barb right through, me pushing down on the exit puncture with Simon trying to push to hook in. It was quite sickening and without any appropriate surgical tools we headed back to the boat to operate. I was a bit nervous at using cutters on the hook and were relieved to see Robbie and Corrie returning to Barra B. We headed straight over to find Robbie had just been stung on the hand by a box jelly fish. He pushed through the pain of his own injury and pulled out his surgical gear – engine room pliers and cutters – sterilized with metho of course. Here’s the video of the surgery – best not to be watched before eating.

All fixed up we headed back out and Simon caught another Barra. Damn – he’s now well ahead of me in the fishing comp.

We are now getting quite low on diesel and will not make it back to Darwin on current stores. To save going into West Bay for fuel, Barra B kindly offered for us to raft up and get 200ltrs of fuel from them. What a relief! About the same time our eutectic freezer packed up slowly releasing all it’s gas. With our freezer full of our bags limits of Barra, Mangrove Jack, Threadfin, Fingermark and Cod we are hoping the electric freezer can keep up the pace until we get to Darwin.