Wilsons Promontory, Corner Inlet and the Snakes. 

You see, I gave the map to Riscy then he asked me where we were headed and I pointed to the headland directly visible behind Little Snake Island (the moment of blunder)  So we paddled there.  It was pretty rough.  We don't have spray decks yet.  I copped a lot of water... sorta like the figurehead ladies at the front of those old boats... except I had to paddle (and bail out water).

We got there and decided it was too late to find our campsite which we figured would be at least another hour given our progress so far.  I kept on apologising to Riscy, because I couldn't believe it had taken us so long to get there.  Snake Island seemed alot more mountainous than I thought it would be.  I had expected a low lying mangrove and mudflat surrounded island; a place where they actually ford cattle to in low tide.  I couldn't work it out.  The water we had paddled across was DEEP.  Very Deep.

We had spotted a beach about 1/2 an hour's paddle away and decided to check it out to possibly camp the night.  

Luckily we found paradise. 

A white sanded, deserted beach with a little sheltered nook at the base of a granite mountain.  Riscy cooked us up a wondrous beef curry and later we strolled along the beach with the glorious, purple sunset behind us and the full, juicy moon rising in front of us.

A little green yacht motored into our cove overnight, carrying a yoga lady and her speedo husband.  They kindy infomed us that the next day (Sunday) was going to be 38DegC (100F) with a 25-30knot NorthEasterly.  That worried us a little.  The channel was pretty rough, especially when the tides were running in or out.  So we planned to leave early to beat the wind and catch the in coming tide.

But that day (Saturday) we wanted to check out the eastern side of this island to try and match our map with our surroundings (without success, it didn't make sense at all) and also to try out our new fishing rod. 

Given the hundreds of flathead we had seen in the shallows around Little Snake Island, I had high hopes.  But no luck.  We paddled a lot, tried to catch some fish, and then decided to head back to paradise for a late lunch.  We got lazy in the afternoon and retreated from the march flys into our tent and read the books we had packed.  I was reading Cloudstreet by my 'favourite author to read when camping', Tim Winton.  My idea of bliss.  Later that afternoon, Riscy tried to catch some fish and I climbed the green and pink lichen splattered granite boulders behind our campsite to take in the view.  I was pretty confused because I couldn't see the channel between 'Snake Island' and Wilsons Prom.  And I didn't see any snakes.

That night Riscy cooked us up a feast of canned tuna and tomato pasta with grated parmesan, for desert we ate canned peaches. Yummo... although flathead would have been nice too.

The next day we packed up our site and then packed up our kayak.... well acutally I ran as gopher and Riscy => the master packer, packed.  It already looked rough out on the channel.  We had decided to paddle down and cross at the shortest crossing of the channel.  We paddled like the dickens, at times the swell was over our heads, which wouldn't be so bad, but without spray decks, it was pretty tricky.  It took us about 3/4 hour to cross the channel.

When we had a breather we looked back and I said to Riscy " I think we just camped on Wilsons Prom.  We were on the top of the hooky bit"  Riscy got the map out of his pocket and all of a sudden it made sense.  We had actually paddled towards Mt Singapore on the first day across the 'Singapore Deep' channel.  Doh.  How stupid! (it was a 12-13km paddle there on the first day)

We had the current with us on the way up the real Snake Island and tried again to catch flathead in the shallows around Little Snake Island.  We were paddling less than 1m over the bloody things and yet we couldn't catch 'em.  It would have been more effective to just whack the things with my paddle.

Then the wind really kicked in when we rounded the point on Little Snake Island.  It was a terrible hard slog into a harsh head wind all the way back to Port Welshpool.  It seemed to take us a million years to get back.  We beached about 1/2 a kilometre from our car, when I tried to get out of the kayak by legs gave up an I keeled over in a very ungraceful manner into the water.

An old bloke, with one leg gave Riscy a lift back to our car (he knew which car, I think he watches boat traffic all day and had seen us leave on Friday), and I unpacked the kayak and ferried our stuff up onto the foreshore.  We loaded up the car, lifted the kayak on top and drove a couple hundred metres down the road to buy some fish'n'chips.  I had flathead.

Other highlights which I did not have space to include in the story:

*We got up close and personal with a stingray when wading along the shore, I'm sure it would have come right up to us but I spooked and scared it away. 

*We had a 'free form' beehive hanging off a fallen, gnarled, bansia tree behind our campsite. We think they were european bees because they had the classic beeswax honey comb thing happening.

* We found out today that the 'rough stuff' we encountered on our first day is an area called 'five ways' a junction of 5 channels which can be very, very treacherous.  We have learnt alot. 

Things we will not kayak without again: Spraydecks.  And GPS.  And a Camera.