Easter Bunny in the Bush

Rain this morning, it hasn’t stopped us fishing we carry with us blue plastic ponchos that wrap as small as a handkerchief. They keep you dry, however are in the way when fishing. The river is still again and the rain gone by just on ten in the morning. Our catch in the morning was excellent and there is plenty of fish for lunch. We had a big feed of crumbed fish, mashed potatoes and vegetables. Everybody was a little full and very snoozey in the afternoon.

Easter this year is a little longer as it has run into ANZAC day, which is today. It’s not hard to have a minute’s silence out here, apart from the wild life it is silent nearly all the time. We don’t see many other people on the river and common sense would say this is the busy time of the year. The campsites are all occupied we certainly know the ones north of us as we saw the occupants on Friday when went fishing north of campsite 15.

Perhaps I should explain this a little, the accessible river is approximately 25 kilometers, with the first couple of kilometers having access by power boat but beyond that it is by paddle only. No motors, well no combustion engines, as electrics are okay.

As good as home

Although the campsite numbering is from one to fifteen, there are only nine physical campsites, we are at campsite eight this trip and that is about three hours from where we start at Harry’s Hut. The campsites are about 30 minutes paddle apart, you could have neighbours on both sides but you wouldn’t know it. I mentioned we are at campsite eight, this is actually an hour away from our nearest neighbour to the south at campsite five, and twenty minutes from the one to north at campsite nine.

There is a couple at campsite nine and they are doing what we are doing, seriously fishing for bass. We rarely see other fishing people, it’s normally people having fun camping and canoeing and the dreaded sea kayakers. More about those later. Back to the couple at campsite nine. We have seen them paddle past us toward the south most days, we only ever saw them marginally north of their own campsite once. Our conversations have always been guarded and he consistently says he isn’t catching much. I believe this is the second trip we have met this guy up here and he looks very much like a seasoned fishing person.

The girls have fished in a hole very close to his campsite and he is never there, they have caught the biggest fish so far of the entire trip right close to his camp site and yet he doesn’t seem to fish there. Today he appears to have gone home and so the girls went down stream to where they thought he was fishing and think they have found the spot. They caught quite few fish and Harley got the biggest of the trip yet, she measured it and put it back as we had eaten enough fish today. The weather had turned nasty again in the last bit of the day. Al and I got home before it hit but the others didn’t and like drowned rats when they got back, happy drowned rats because of their success.