Sailing Rally

During the rally we visited Great Palm Island – inhabited by an Aboriginal community, regretably crime has been rampant, there are 18 police officers and approximately 3500 people.

Another one of the Islands we visited was Dunk Island which is shown on the left – it is the largest and most famous of the Family Islands due mainly to the writings of its first white settler Edmund Banfield whose lyrical excerps describing island life have become symbolic of tropical island paradise. Edmund lived here with his wife Bertha from 1897, drawn by the possibility of a Robinson Crusoe existance he quit his job to search for his own tropical isle. With the help of a few Aboriginal inhabitants and the proceeds of his writings, managed to survive and build a slab hut. During his life on the island he kept a daily journal in which he described island life and Dunk's astounding wildlife. It was these beautiful and finely descriptive essays that were the basis of 4 books which were to establish Dunk's reputation in the world as an idyllic island paradise.


Hinchinbrook – Australia's largest Island National Park and it is as wild as it is beautiful and remote, the rock cliff faces and the headlands of it's seaward coastline broken only here and there by long curving beaches of unmarked white sand. Awesome too, is the diversity of plant and animal life until now only revealed to the walker negotiating the steep and sudden rise from the sea's edge to mountain peak. Swimming can be dangerous in certain places due to crocodiles, sharks or stinging jelly fish.

Warwick, the skipper and his daughter live permanently on the yacht, they have no home on land. It is very cramped on board with a total of 6 people. 2 of the crew share a double bed which they have to curl up on as it is not very long, pictured below. I have a long enough bed but less than half the width of the size of my single bed at home. During some rough seas it was not easy to stay in bed. We did one night sail and took it in 4 hour watches to steer the yacht. Bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast, picture on right.