Monday 23rd April 2018

We lie anchored a couple of miles up the Burnett river watchful of the depth gauge. It’s high tide and reading 2.3m under the keel. If this were a spring tide we would be on the bottom at low water but today we have a neap tide and in theory we shouldn’t drop below a metre. We are inexperienced at playing the tidal range rather than using the absolute chart datum, we wait with baited breath as the river gently ebbs.

We are here because tomorrow we are off to Lady Musgrave Island and her surrounding reef and hopefully back to clear turquoise water. Needing to enter the atoll in good light we require an early start. All the motor sailing we have done lately means we were low on diesel. Not wanting to fuel up at five in the morning we left the marina for the fuel dock at lunchtime and now sit ready to go.

Last week continued with a flurry of maintenance jobs and more cleaning, if we say it ourselves Raya is feeling very spick and span. For the time being at least, Rick’s ‘to do list’ is nearly fully ticked off.

Besides all the hard work, one thing that will stay in our memories of Bundaberg is its incredible skies. The combination of flat surroundings and changeable weather has led to dramatic vistas day and night. Wednesday around midnight, woken by the light coming through the hatch above him, Rick was treated to a spectacular display as distant lightening illuminating far off clouds . The next day as I walked out along the coastal path, with rain threatening, I think almost every type and colour of cloud was present in the huge sky above me.

Dramatic Bundaberg skies

And streaked with the last of the morning haze and dotted with building fine weather clouds, across an intense blue, again Friday the sky was amazing. We had hired a car for the day and driven a short way down the coast to Elliot’s Heads. After the dark reddish beaches around Port Bundaberg it was refreshing to suddenly find some white sand. At the estuary of Elliot’s river extensive sand banks are exposed at low tide, stretching right across the wide river mouth. Clear, warm streams of sea water run in the tangle of gullies that form between them. It made for a perfect hour or so of walking and paddling.

Paddling at Elliots Heads

Invigorated from our beach walk, we shunned the normal tourist stops at the Rum Distillery and the Hinkler Aviation museum and instead opted for a stroll through the Botanical Gardens. In delightful contrast to the coast, a shady boardwalk wound us through stately palms and across large ponds full of water birds. It seems that even in the smaller towns Australia does an extremely good job with these gardens.

Back onboard a flock of noisy kookaburras arrive to perch up in the rigging and the tide continues to recede, we play a game of Mexican train as the setting sun turns the sky a burnt orange. Still we have half an eye on the dropping depth, but less worried as our decent slows. As the tide turns we still have the theoretical 1m below the keel, we take to our bed, we have an early start in the morning.