Australia and Covid-19, how did we manage?
15/03/2020
We returned from Tasmania yesterday afternoon to find our home in a perfect condition after a "road trip" of 1,5 months in New Zealand and Tasmania. Now it was time to get her back into immaculate condition, but not before a wonderful breakfast. The Boatworks café still served food the first two days. On the third day, alcohol gel flasks appeared on every corner and the 4th day we could only get takeaway.
The borders with New South Wales were closing and everybody around us was speeding up there boat jobs to get into the water as quickly as possible.
We had 5 days to polish and antifoul the whole boat and luckily had our haul in to the water reserved 2 months ago...
While Geoffrey spent 3 days polishing the hulls, I was able to get a car 2 hours every day to try and find food... The queues were loooooooong ... People were emptying the stores in no time. I managed to get to two stores a day just to buy 2 packs of pasta and one pack of rice (max limit) each time. You were allowed two tins regardless of the contents and there was no flour to be found anywhere... No other option though, as our goal was to isolated ourselves on the outer Great Barrier Reef ...
My foreign accent turned me into some biological bomb! People were unfriendly, amazing how selfish they get when afraid.
Rations for alcohol were very reasonable though, only 60 l of wine, 100 cans of beer, and I don't remember how many liters of spirits, each time you got into the store. Perfect combination to solve the big domestic violence problems 😏
With a reasonably full boat, I was ready to attack the propellors so Geoffrey could install the new anodes.
A professional stainless steel artist had petty on me scraping this off by hand so he brought over some tools and I got this job done in half an hour!
So 1,5 days left to antifoul, while poor Geoffrey was still polishing! But look at the result!!!
20/03/2020 Nerve racking Friday. It's boat after boat in the water. They reserved ours on the small lift and so we were not a priority anymore. Tomorrow borders would be officially closing and we wouldn't be allowed to move at all! As nice as they are at the Boatworks, the prospect of being stuck here for a few months is not so appealing, so it's time for the "angry nervous wife" act and the nice husband pleading to get us in the water 😌😈
Yessss!!! We're off! This feels soooo good!
This wrapped boat is Dragonfly (the Google boat) we saw in Fidji. They went through the same pumice stone patch as we did but at a higher speed, so the boat 's gelcoat was wrecked!
The imminent lockdown wasn't visible yet. The river was as busy as before, but the rules were not so clear either... So we decided to stay the weekend in Hope harbour, to check everything above the water line and come up with a plan for the next months.
There really are people that have it all: villa at the waterfront, catamaran on the pontoon in front of the house... and a great climate!
But hey, we also have it all!!! 😍
While our two beautiful girls make us dinner we scan the possible sailing-routes.
But this will depend on the upcoming political and weather restrictions... For now we check the boat to make her ready for the Indian Ocean.
23/03/2020 Louise and Anna are working in their restaurant.
and Geoffrey is scanning every mm of the boat.
And luckily because he found a defect in the steering cables, I guess after 16 000 nm it is not to bad that this is the only wear on the boat!
29/03/2020 So we're back at the Boatworks to install the new cables. And I'm finishing a longtime overdue project. By now the girls are too tall for the original design, so I have to improvise 😋
This truly is the last sunset at the gold coast! Tomorrow we are really really gone. We have learned that, while we cannot cross to visit Sydney, we can go up towards the warmer weather as we are sailing for sport, for food, it's our home and our only transport. We're not going away more than 15 km from our home, so ... we reading through the lines we assume we can continue our travels.
And all reasons are good for a toast and party 😌😎
02/04/2020 I guess Queensland is not the worst place to be confined to. It's huge, warm and we can explore the Great Barrier Reef. First lap towards Peel Island.
Bye bye Gold Coast!
Been there, done that, still scary, ... it seems we already know this place quite well 😏
03/04/2020 Back at Peel island. We still hoped to see dugongs, but the water is just not clear enough... We did see some dolphins again.
And we saw our friends from Brisbane again! Once more for a last goodbye 😏 About 30 vessels were moored here and the police was inspecting to see if everybody respected the social distancing rules 😬
04/04/2020 Great morning, but it was visibly getting colder. The air couldn't contain the high humidity anymore so we would be leaving towards lady Musgrave the next day. We needed warmth and to get away from the crowd...
Louise made a small home for her friend, the spider.
And I finished Louises' dress.
05/04/2020 There are less and less boats on our way up. Some empty cruise ships. It feels a bit weird and unreal. I really wanted to see the dunes and wrecks off North Stradbroke again, but we didn't want to take the risk to be confined here... So we decided to go on the ocean side of Fraser towards lady Musgrave in order to get there faster.
A new friend is drying his wings.
07/04/2020 24 hours at 8 knots on average with a great Southern wind to arrive at the north of Fraser island only to be stopped there by the East Australian current! The current against the wind made huge waves and for the next 12 hours we only advanced at about 1 knot! Needless to say we were very happy when we got out of the current and spotted Lady Musgrave once more 😍
We're wondering if we would find enough shelter, but already saw 3 other boats in the lagoon.
We got checked out by Border Force, but they wished us "a great stay on the islands", so I guess they appreciated our self isolation 😌😋
Last time we were here we saw mommy turtles laying their eggs, this time we only found footprints of the babies getting back into the water. Too late to see the miracle of them getting out of their eggs 😥
We only staid 5 days because we wanted to stop at a few more of these amazing reefs. If you plan on doing the same thing and the weather allows it we suggest you stay a few weeks at Lady Musgrave.
Beach walk: check
Island discovery walk: check
Spring (no wait autumn) cleaning: check
Diving all around the lagoon: check
Afternoon nap on the water with daddy: check
Rainbow: check
Beautiful sunset: check
12/04/2020 Time to say goodbye to one of the most beautiful places we've visited "this year" 😋
While sailing towards Fitszroy Reef, we had another visit of Border Force.
But again we could keep going on 😌
Before entering Fitszroy Reef, we noticed two big boats. On the GPS it appeared to be two large fishing boats were inside the reef. We heard they do that to clean their boats so add that to the increasing amount of shark attacks in this region 😠
So no stopover for us and we continued toward Heron island.
A bit too rough to go swimming and just a week ago a ranger got bitten here (and died) by a shark around dinner time (5 o'clock), which is the exact time as we pick out a buoy, sooooo no swimming for us!
13/04/2020 last night we had to let go of our buoy. The wind blowing opposite of the tide was quite annoying and we were bumping into the buoy all the time. Besides the possible damage to the boat it makes a lot of noice so we decided to leave as it's not a nice place to enjoy the underwater life anyway...
So hup towards the Keppel Islands.
Seems that it's a very popular place!
But we managed to squeeze in 😌
A bit of playing,
and learning, ...
... and watching the whole bay having a party on the beach (respecting social distancing! 😏)
... while jumping to get our daily exercise 😀
... and starting the evening watching this beautiful light spectacle the sky gives us every day!
Great Keppel Island is quite a good shelter with a beautiful beach. The water is not clear so we only swam close to the beach.
We were surrounded by cute tiny birds and thousands of butterflies.
The flapping made Louise very very tired 😏
15/04/2020 We wanted to try and find food at Rosslyn. Maybe people were nicer further from the big towns. While we were ready to confront the germs. We decided it's best Geoffrey went alone as to minimise our risk of infection. Poor guy, he had to go to 4 stores during two days, using public transport that had absolutely no correct time tables. But we could go on for a few more weeks now, still no flour so we were a bit low on bread...
Just back in time, to ride out the storm on LouiseAnna.
20/04/2020 Geoffrey's birthday. It was a bit choppy this morning, so we went around Keppel again to have breakfast in calmer waters.
20/04/2020 afternoon. He just always gets restless on his birthday, so we decided to keep moving North.
21/04/2020 South Percy Island shelter is good, but the water is again not clear enough to swim... So we kept going North towards Middle Percy Islands ...
22/04/2020 We arrived at the A-frame (Smith Bluff) where we ended up staying a few days. We were just two boats at first, but 6 when we decide to leave in a very small bay...
You kind of have it all here: beautiful beach, wonderful walks and nice people. Only snorkelling is so so ...
The cries of excitement from Louise and Anna woke a small boy, same age of Louise, Ace, that lives in the treehouse.
So while we kept exploring, they were off playing!
We have finally found another piece of heaven, so we wanted to have daddies birthday party here!
Not my best cake, but it's hard to work with limited products 😉😂
23/04/2020 The short track on Middle Percy is not so short... And you shouldn't get lost, but you kind of do!
We started off in the swamps:
Astonishing, noisy and hostile environment!
Oeps no way through ...
They are very funny 😏
Again, no way through ...
So we had to turn back ...
While you have your nose close to the ground to check out these beautiful butterflies, a snake suddenly moves in front of you 😀
And everywhere you go you have to watch out for spiderwebs, so daddy had to walk first 😊😂
Oef we made it back out!
Don't look at my dirty feet, but the huge footprint!!!
Already two more boats arrived during our walk. During a social distancing safe gathering later that night we heard some more wonderful conversations. Louise and Anna had a huge fire with Ace on the beach 😲
Such gentle people and funny to hear about all their different opinions and conspiracy theories concerning Covid-19. We realised some of these travellers must have been away for a very very long time!😏😲
24/04/2020 Another walk, but this time we took Ace as guide with us. It's the Southern beach. Very pretty but apparently lots of plastic washes up here all the time 😓
It's the windy side!
And this is not rusty metal, it's sand!
The wind just creates these amazing sculptures!
Besides plastic there are also enormous pumice stones!
Small souvenir to leave behind ...
And a drone souvenir to take with us ...
Because, as it gets crowded, it's time to go on ... more to the North ...
25/04/2020 Arrival at the Whitsundays! Goldsmith Island.
26/04/2020 Shaw Island
27/04/2020 We left again as it became an uncomfortable mooring again. Uncomfortable for mommy, but not for little Louise!
28/04/2020 We need internet to know what was going on back home...
Some bad news was coming through ...
So we didn't wait for the rain to pass and luckily Geoffrey didn't need to be outside all the time. The view inside is just as good...
... and steering with the iPad perfect 😌
03/05/2020 We were at Airlie beach. A bit of a ghost town at that moment, but the playgrounds were opening up again.
And then the very sad news that we had lost my grandmother. We really would have liked to cuddle her one more time... It was a bit lonely to be so far from our family in these hard times. Even though you couldn't really be close to each other in Belgium either... We were very fortunate to be able to follow the service from a distance and to be able to find some closure even though the emptiness stays...
Goodbye sweet Bomma...
We needed some more time alone and could find it almost everywhere on the Whitsunday Islands. It's normally black with thousands of tourists, but now we were alone on every island! We were actually very lucky as the madness would have made us skip these beautiful islands.
Nara inlet. A bit of a tricky anchorage. Lots of "bullets", very strong winds hitting you like a bullet. Pretty but unclear water and very little beach or walks.
A curious Kakatoo came to say hi.
He got really close, but we quickly understood he was after the fruit basket!
It looks nice, but it's not swimmable water 😓 And everything appeared to be dead anyway...
04/05/2020 So much forest so we were off exploring... Tricky landing on a few m2 without rocks. So you have to time your walk right. But no problem, as we were set for a few hours of hiking, we were already back 15 minutes later. There's just no possibility to go on further than that...
Electronic buttons!!! Aaaah this is how you notice this must be a very touristic place indeed!
07/05/2020 We tried the North of Hook Island: Butterfly bay.
The girls remade Ace's treehouse.
We squeezed in the very far end of Butterfly bay. The only place where you are relatively well protected of the "bullits". Lots of coral, but again all dead ...
No walking in this bay. Snorkling was so so but we got to play on the beach 😉
09/05/2020 Off to Border island.
Another Whitsunday island. A bit of a longer walk and especially a gorgeous view!
Giant beach mazes, Louise made one for her sister.
And after pretending to be a great fishermen, Geoffrey decided he could use his stick better for a giant maze for his girls 😂😍
And to top up another perfect day: a joyride!
11/05/2020 Next stop North of the Hill Inlet outlook.
A few dangerous species, nothing special 😏
On the way back we stopped for a walk over a 5 to 7 m thick layer of coral-walk.
A bit sad, but we did find some wonderful treasures and brought just "one" back 😳
13/05/2020 As we came this far we quickly wanted to explore Whiteheaven beach. The weather was not perfect and LouiseAnna was poorly sheltered, but we started just in time. I think not many people can show you a picture being all alone here!
Oh and then we found freshly cut grass and garden tools and 5 minutes later two rangers. They were preparing the island to burn part of it down. That's what they do every year to keep the "natural" habitat 😏
Joepie GIANT cockroaches! uurgh this calls for extra shoe cleaning!
Back at the beach some more people joined us. But we left to find shelter at CID bay. Another storm was coming ...
14/05/2020 CID bay is quite curious. Cones everywhere in the water to warn you not to swim!!! It's the best place to sit out stormy weather.
You are really well protected. And it has one of the most beautiful views of the whole of the Whitsundays. You have to earn it, as it's straight up!!!
We had to pull Bob up high enough and calculate the tide as we did not want to set a foot in the water here ...
Every leaf is hundred stairs! Good way to motivate your children 😁
And look at our perfect timing! Still some time to look for shells 😌
22 - 23 / 05 / 2020 The new storm system officially brought winter over. WE ARE FREEZING HERE!!!
18 degrees during the day 4 to 8 degrees in the morning...
We have to come up with another plan!
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