All Saints of the Estuaries

All Saints Day is when Irwins Inlet, Pallinup and other estuaries close to commercial fishers for the summer and fishermen of the deep south head for the open seas in their little boats ...

The Well That Matthew Flinders' Men Dug

Bush bashing out the back of Bremer ...
My four wheel drive host Blunty says 'There's a well here that the explorers dug.'
He pulled into a camp behind the sand dunes. 'It's around here somewhere.'

Someone had set up their own cubby of branches and a fireplace in that sheltered bit of forest on the edge of the prickly country. No well.

'Well, maybe not. But I saw it around here. It's somewhere close.'

I said I'd see him down the track and started walking for the beach.
The dogs followed me, panting, short of water after grabbing branches for an hour on the back of the ute in 30 degrees.
Blunty caught me up and we all jumped in and he found it then, because he'd been there before,
mate.

Seven days after visiting Kinjarling, Flinders dropped into Doubtful Island Bay.
Kinjarling:
"On 30 December, (1801) Flinders ordered his marines onto the beach to be 'exercised' in the presence of a group of Aboriginal men who had become constant visitors and 'friends at the tents of the strangers'. Flinders noted 'the red coats and white crossed belts were greatly admired' by the men, as he believed they resembled 'their own manner of ornamenting themselves.' ... "

Tiffany Shellam, Shaking Hands on the Fringe, University of Western Australia, 2009, p.18.

Setting Nets for Sea Mullet at Pallinup

 

Smoke on the Water

Fishing Shacks #3

                                                           

                                                                     

                                      
                                                                                                                                

Fishing Shacks #2

Fishing Shacks

East of Albany, the whales are still rolling about in the tuquoise waters of long, white bays.
Sand so fine it squeaks beneath your feet.
Hot nor-westerly.
Smoke haze from the out-of-control fires at Bluff Creek.
Working with necessity being the mother of invention and a strange but fine tuned sense of aesthetics, commercial fishermen have been building shacks along the coast for generations. The one above is Grievous' brother's shack. Another brother built one at Drage's Beach where they fished for herring but now all that remains is a fireplace in the bush.
Next ... Whale Villa, where the Gordon Inlet greets a hard, wind swept sand bar and the flock of resting plovers rise in unison straight into the sky. They settle just as fast, on the skin of the water, as the dog swaggers away.

 Below, the caravan's door opens into a dinky verandah, looking out to the sea. The backs of all the fishing shacks appear verdant, healthily green with a lingering smell ... yes, it's the septic tank. There's a great fig tree growing out the back of just about all these shacks.

                                      
                                                                    

                                                                 

                                                                  

                                                                  Whalebone Beach