We pulled into Derby in the morning which left us plenty of time to bait up the hooks and head out to the pier to fish. It took a few minutes to put hooks and sinkers on and then the boys realised that they needed more. We went to the local fishing shop and they were told to buy huge hooks and sinkers. At least twice the size of what we had. The lady said ” our fish are huge here and you could easily catch a shark”. Back to the hook and sinker isle the boys went to stock up.
Even though it was a predicted top of 39 degrees, by the time we made it to the pier, the sun had gone in and the wind had picked up.
We all picked up our rods and waited for Ray to bait them (too smelly for me and there was no water within easy reach to wash my fingers to get rid of that fishy smell – well!), then we all dropped our lines in swiftly.
I was amazed at how quickly the water pulled the line out and was just debating whether there would be enough line to reach the sea bed on my brand new fluro pink fishing rod. I looked down to the spool to find that I had no line left – literally. It was all gone. The line, hook, sinker everything was on its way to China.
That put an end to my fishing efforts so I happily watched everyone else.
It was so windy on the pier that we were a little worried about Harry being blown away. Amazingly, the pier only had railing on one side of it. Cars could drive on and off the pier and we commented “never in Melbourne”.
Chris and I recalled being here 33 years ago and we both agreed on the exact spot where Dad pulled in his shark. Alas, we pulled in nothing after a couple of hours although Aaron swore he felt nibbles and we certainly fed something in the water a lot of bait.
The owner at our caravan park suggested we watch the sunset over the boab tree in the estate next to us so before dinner we decided to go there.
While waiting for the sunset we met up again with our neighbors from Darwin who we have seen at various places since leaving there. We enjoyed a drink and a chat while the kids played together. Richard and Sonia have 3 kids and with our 3, there was plenty of laughter and running around.
The sunset was magnificent and we reluctantly left to return to the vans for dinner. We hope to catch up with them again somewhere on the road.