Day 14: Seisia

We decided to extend our stay here as it is such a pretty place and there is so much to do. Today was a washing, cleaning and shopping day and we got busy with all of these jobs. Well, there is really not too much to get busy about. Helen and Jim had some cleaning to do as they accidentally left one of the camper doors open as they were going along the road and filled in the inside of the camper with red bulldust. There was lots and lots of red bulldust - micro fine, caking bulldust that has covered every little crack of area that was open. It took several hours to clean up and will be lesson learned! The supermarket is Seisia was good and the boys bought some new fishing gear. Apparently the rods we brought from home are too light and there is a special bait jig used to catch the bait fish that are used to catch the bigger fish. The supermarket is well stocked and had everything we need. Except bananas and they are expected on the barge tomorrow - food supplies are brought in by barge from Cairns twice a week.

We decided to go and test out the new fishing line and headed down to the wharf. The wharf is the central place in Seisia and it is a busy place – the ferry to Thursday Island and Horn Island leaves from here and if you haven’t got a boat then this is the place to be. We haven’t managed to find anyone to give us a ride in their boat yet, so it looks like the wharf is the place for us. Helen tried to catch the bait fish with the bait jigger, but had problems getting them in. Helen is not a good fisherman and even though there were more than a billion little fish around the wharf, and she had 6 hooks on her line, she still could manage to catch one fish in two hours. Sad really. One the other hand, Rick was good at catching the little bait fish and he was handing them to Jim who was busy trying to catch the bigger fish. And he turned out to be very good at it – he hooked a shark (but it got away), then another shark that he reeled in and it was about 3 metres long. I’m not sure what he was planning on doing with it, but fortunately for us all, it broke the line and got away. Finally, Jim brought us home a Spanish mackerel for tea. It was big enough to feed us for a couple of nights, and the bloke in the next door camp showed us how to fillet it and cook it. It was delicious to eat.

We wandered down to the wharf after tea to see if we should drop in a line, and the barge from Cairns came in. So the fishing was off, but the boys were very excited about watching the barge slide in to the wharf. The bad news is that the wharf is closed tomorrow morning while they unload and reload the barge, but I am sure that the boys will be just as interested in that as the actual fishing.