The works crews were gone a couple of weeks, & they have done a brilliant job. The lighthouse glows bright white with a red dome, & is every bit the icon you imagine. It was only a 15 minute amble around the island, & from the beach we could make out the distant Wilson & Tryon Islands on the horizon. It would have been one seriously lonely job being the keeper back in the days when it was considered too harsh a place for anyone except single men.
The power of the sea around the reef had settled on the previous night's exhibition of fury, & we enjoyed our own little piece of time taking it all in.
The tide was dropping dramatically by 9am, so we packed up & beat an exit over the shallow reef into the blue water again. We were treated to turtles, a convoy of big black manta rays, a couple of inquisitive sharks, school after school of running fish & seabirds & a couple of dolphins. All in the 14km from North Reef to Tryon Island, so the Green Zones the marine authorities have instituted are working!
We stopped for lunch & a circumnavigation stroll of the beautiful Tryon Island, before crossing the deep water across to North West Island.
North West is a camping island similar to Musgrave & the contrast to the rawness of North Reef was apparent to all of us. It feels way more coastal, even though we're still 80km from the nearest land.
There is a big bunch of fishermen camping here & they cooked us a great feed & swapped some tales, so our best efforts to lighten up by eating through our food appear to have once again been thwarted. These guys were amazing, members of the North West Fishing Club, set up like a military camp, complete with pizza oven, hot running showers powered by massive solar arrays & 11 fridges (for 10 blokes).
Slight change of tack with us off to Hummocky Island tomorrow instead of Great Keppel, a 58km crossing cross the predicted conditions, to set us up for the predicted south easterly wind to ride us into Emu Park.
Rob, Mark & Chris.
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