Wicked continued

This is part II of my Wicker Camper Van trip in Australia with Stefano. If you want to read part I, click on "vorige" at the bottom of this blog.

So we were desperately looking for a place to fish Barramundi and we found a camping site with a boat ramp into the Victoria River. Somebody had told us we could fish for Barra’s from the ramp, but warned us to watch out for the crocodiles. As we got there, several other guys where gearing up and we fished together while the sun was setting giving us sceneries of most spectacular colours. And then, after a couple of catfish, I caught a bullshark... Before I could even decide whether to just take a picture and release it or whether to eat it, one of the guys we befriended, cut off its tail to bleed the shark while alive and said “There you go, you gotta bleed it fast mate! Here, you hold it, I’ll take a picture of you”... Hmmm, well, no use in throwing it back now, I thought, slightly upset about the situation... Still, a few hours later, Stefano was filleting the shark and we had dinner with three Aussies. One day later, 400 km further along the North coast, Stefano finally caught more than 30 Barra’s of which we had the biggest one (55 cm) for dinner.

Another place we had been where the catch was abundant, was on a beach near a farm near a village near a town called Esperance on the South Coast. In Australia however, the word “near” has a totally different value than it has for me, who grew up mostly in tiny Holland. So the beach was 60 km from the farm where Ryan, a friend of Stefano’s lives. And the farm was 60 km from the town Condingup, which in turn was 60 km from Esperance. So the beach was a mere 180 km from Esperance. But when you try to explain this in Australian, you just say you were fishing “near” Esperance.

And getting up at 3 am to go fishing at high tide is also completely normal. And then driving another 70 km to another beach for another good fishing spot, is completely normal too. By 3 pm however, we (Ryan, Stefano and I) had caught a royal amount of herrings and salmon trout and we went home to get cleaned up and ready for a birthday party at the golf club of Condingup. Remember, that’s 60 km from Ryan’s house, so we went by camper van, Ryan took his swag, and after a party with lots of good Australian wine and beer, we spent the remainder of the night in the camper van in the parking lot of the golf club. The next morning, for breakfast, we grilled nice juicy entrecotes on the hotplate of the golfclub. The entrecotes had nicely defrosted overnight, as we had used them as “ice” to keep the beers (Stefano), wine (me) and cans of Jim Beam & coke (Ryan) cold in the coolbox. This I think I need to explain. Ryan works as a mechanic on a cattle farm and often gets meat. And not just a little meat, like the “150 grams per day otherwise it’s unhealthy” kind of portions. No, he gets A LOT of meat, for free. So he has 3 (three) freezers packed with dead animals. Lamb chops, ribs, fillets, beef steaks, ribs, T-bones, entrecotes, sausages, you name it, it’s there. So what do you do with all that meat as a bachelor? You use is to keep your Jim Beams cold or you use it as bait for yabbies (sweet water langoustines). Can you imagine? Meat you would pay EUR 80 a kilo for in Europe, here you just stuff it in a cage to catch a couple of oversized prawns... Oh well, when in Rome, do as the Romans, so Stefano and I set out to complement the fish catch with a yabby supply and managed quite successfully to catch about 25 of those delicious crustaceans... I don’t think I’ve ever been on such a self sufficient holiday...

And as I write this, we have just passed Broom where we met up with Iain, one of the guys we shared our shark with at Vic river. We went out with him and had interesting discussions about raising kids, the Aboriginals in Australia and the credit crisis. And now we are at a wonderful camping (or caravan park as they call it here) at Eighty Miles Beach.

Again the sunsets are beautiful beyond words, we are fishing from a beach with white sand, shiny shells scattered everywhere and the horizon splits the turquoise sea from the celestial blue sky. When we fish at night, the shooting stars illuminate the skies and there is fish galore... Blue-nose threadfin, Mulloway, sharks... Friendly neighbours, wonderful cool evenings, the Mac plugged into the power socket, iTunes playing Blue Note Trip music, huge crickets and small moths flying around in the light bulb, stars glittering above us, the new moon shining faintly in the sky... I’m so happy I could burst. And at 2 am last night, my Italian fisherman/cook/dishwasher/lover caught a 110 cm long Mulloway of about 12 kilo’s, so he’s like a boy who got his entire wish list for Christmas.

We have eight days left to get back to Perth for our flight back to Phuket (via Singapore), but in these eight days we hope to meet up with the brothers Collin (the aforementioned shark finner) and Dean who might take us out hunting kangaroo, but will definitely take us fishing in Onslow, their hometown. And that will be a whole other story...