Big Abs and Clawless Crays‏

Hii Yeee,

I know I just sent a story yesterday, but I’ve got to get these few off before we leave for our next adventure…see if you can guess what it is?  I’ll tell you in a few days if you can’t.

After surfing at Trial Harbor it is becoming quickly apparent that west coast Tazzie locals are absurdly friendly and generous.  Not just in that everyone says G-day but in that out surfing, its just me and a local guy and he says, “surf like a pig man, take every wave you can, I’ve already surfed this morning, I’ll just pick off the ones you don’t go for.”  Now who on earth has ever heard a surfer say that, wouzers, like another planet. 

Our visit to Granville harbor proved no exception.  Upon acquainting ourselves with the town and surrounding area and being sufficiently sure there weren’t any good waves we were missing out on we decided to go for a bit of a snorkel, see if we could find any abalone in the bay.  (For anyone who’s never heard of abalone, it is a shellfish that the Japanese market pays 100 dollars a kilo for, tasty stuff.)  It’s the middle of the day and the heats got us pretty lethargic, so much so that all our snorkeling gear is strewn about and we’re just loungin in the van, out of the sun, trying to motivate to pull our wetsuits on.  Just happens we’re parked close to the local boat ramp and over walk a curious looking fellow, obviously he’s a fisherman or at least part fisherman as he’s just hopped out of his boat but he doesn’t look like the stereotypical Aussie fisherman, around 100kg he’s wearing rubber booties, real short shorts torn up to the waist on one side, a black skull covered biker t-shirt that reads, ‘let those who ride decide’ and a black felt cowboy had, and by the way he walks he looks more like he’s just stepped out of a rodeo than a boat, “surfed any waves around Granville yet?” is the first thing out of his mouth, mind you it is snorkeling gear all over the ground not surf gear.  Maybe he’s a mind reading, motorcycle, rodeo, fisher man with really short shorts, I think.

“Na,” we answered, “couldn’t really figure out where the breaks were.” 

“Ah we got heaps a waves round here, right there” pointing to the middle of the bay “ gets really good, holds up to 30 feet, nice spot to practice on big waves cuz you can sit wide and just pick off the ones you want, but a couse the swell is to small right now.” 

Looked like our renaissance man was a big wave surfer too.

“Going out diving?”  “Yah we’re gunna look for some abs”  “right over there in the middle of the bay you’ll find plenty a dinner plate sized uns,” he says forming his hands into a large circle.

Mind you we’ve hardly ever seen abs half that size.

“Lots of crayfish too, just got to know how to look for em, dig around in the seaweed you know.”

That was enough to get us fired up to pull our wetsuits on and plop into the water, free dinner. 

Then…something that stifeled our enthusiasm a bit, we asked him what he’d been fishing for off the boat?  “O mostly crayfish and we set nets for small fish too, but we got a great white shark tangled up in the net two days ago, 13 feet long, probably just a juvenal, it was already dead when we tried to pull it in, had to drag it to shore and have a backhoe lift it out of the water it was so heavy.  Its jaw was so big I fit my entire head and shoulders inside. 

13 feet long, that’s like stacking my twin on my head and getting him to raise his arms!!!! Holy *$&%*$(#*#&#*@)@)*&%&$   #&*#(%$)$%)$*#&#^@^@%#$&, maybe we didn’t want to go snorkeling after all.

“Ooo… so it was far off shore I hope,” gasped Rachael.

“O no, not at all, just right over there” he pointed.  “Any who I’m off.”

We sat there a while thinking about the shark and trying to decide how badly we really need a free dinner, we did have plenty of rice and baked beans.  Then he appeared again, “ahh you guys will probably never find any crayfish, its impossible unless you know what your doing, here you can have this one my uncle and I just pulled in.” he said, plunking a big live cray into our wetsuit box.  “If your sticking around this afternoon I can take you up the coast for a surf if you like.”  “Sure” we replied.

Staying in only knee-deep water and only a few seconds flipper from the shore we successfully retrieved some abs. 

Hoping into Andrews truck it was a wild track out to the surf break, 4 wheel low, churning sand, over dunes, through mud pits and over huge jagged rocks.  While in the truck we learned Andrew was 27, left school at age 11, worked on ab boats, fishing boats, driven tour boats, was a plastered and currently worked in a nickel mine, he owned 2 houses, his own truck, boat, Harley, was a competitive bull rider (which explained the hat, but still not the short shorts) and was getting married in two months.  Probably the most friendly person we’ve ever met traveling, who just gives strangers an 80 dollar crayfish and takes them surfing.

Arriving at the surf spot, while pulling our wetsuits on Andrew asked, “you guys got a mobile (ie. cell phone).”  “Na, we didn’t bring ours cuz its Optus which doesn’t work anywhere in Tazzie.” 

“Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have bars, you can use any phone to call the shark attack emergency line, you’ve heard of that?”

“Your joking right?” says Rachael.

“O no, not at all, its 112 or 122 I can never remember, call it from anywhere and they’ll send a helicopter, ahh doesn’t matter,” he said as he jogged off towards the beach.

What the hell??  We seriously contemplated not going out but what we’re we gunna do sit around twiddling our thumbs and watch him catch waves all alone.  I think not!! Against our better judgment we went out anyways.

Waves were pretty good and no one was nipped, successful on all accounts.

The Abs and cray were delicious!

Love from the UnderSide,

MUD

Howdy Dudy,

Did yall git the story about the fish(shark)? A few people have told me they didn’t, if not lit me know and I’ll send it on.

Here’s another story about Tazzie, hope you likes it…..minorly crass language wanrning, rated pg13...

Since our last fishing adventure the wiffie and I have been doing some more thorough exploration of Tazzie, what a crazy place.  Literally just today got up; 2 jackets, long underwear, wool shirt, hat, 2 hoods, then one hour later I was wearing shorts and no shirt. 

Never mind, that’s boring stuff, this isn’t a story about the weather it’s a story about mud!!!  Tazzie mud!!

Mainly, as there’s been absolutely zero surf and its been so damn cold we’ve been doing lots of bush walking (ie hiking). 

Now the first thing that comes to peoples minds when you talk about bush walking in Tazzie is mud, not just kids mud that makes your shoes dirty but real mud, the kind you can disappear into.  We kept hearing stories about multi day walks where you spent a good part of your day literally covered head to toe in mud and we’d seen brochures with big warnings about the treterous mud.  ‘A muddy puddle’ you might interject, ‘why not just walk around it?’  Because the reply would come, ‘that’s just not what you do!’  Just like you don’t cut off switch backs out west and you keep off the fragile moss in the white mountains, in Tazzie you straight through the puddle to cut back on trail impact and reduce erosion.  A lot easier said then done I might add.  Imagine this, your feet are nice and warm and your socks are dry, your walking along enjoying a beautifully sunny day when all of a sudden you come across a bogie patch in the trail.  What do you do?  You could be a good bush walker and tromp right on through, guaranteeing your feet will be saturated for the next 6 to 8 hours of walking your gunna do, or…you could just take one step to the side, stand on that nice dry green bush and your feet would still be dry. But; what if everyone did that?  Pretty soon that nice green bush would die and the mud pit would become twice as wide, do that a few more hundred times and the mud pit, and the trail for that matter would be as wide as a school bus.  That’s exactly what started to happen to a lot of Tazzie’s most famous walks, life filled wetlands were quickly turning into ugly lifeless mud pits, walkers were trekking 100’s of meters out of their way just to get around them and inturn making the mud pit even bigger, ok enough of that onto our mud experience.

So Rachael and I were on a four-day bush walk with Rachael’s sister Rebekah and her boyfriend Grant, both of whom are bushwalking guides in Tazzie.  As such Rachael and I were determined to be on our best behaviour, ie not walking around mud pits, even knowing all this its nearly impossible to deliberately let your feet get wet, it’s kind of like getting yourself to use a water sprayer to clean your bum instead of toilet paper, it just seems wrong.  If there’s a choice you’d just grab the TP and never try the bum sprayer, until one day you’re your travelling around Laos on motorcycles and you get food poisoning, then your bum is so sore from all the explosive die-o-ria that you just go ahead and try the damn bum sprayer…and to your amazement, its not half bad, in fact it is kind of nice, come to think of it, it’s down right amazing, you’d probably never use TP again if you had the choice, maybe install one in your own home. 

Kind of like walking all day with wet feet, sounds absolutely awful until you go ahead and try it, and once you have you realize its not half bad walking with wet feet, in fact it’s kind of pleasurable being able to just trounce straight through the mud bogs and river crossings.  But then you wouldn’t know unless you’d tried, and Rachael and I still hadn’t, we kept finding ourselves hop scotching around the mud when Grant and Beck weren’t looking…then came the moment of truth.  We were lagging a bit when we looked up and they were standing atop a little knoll waiting.  Weather deliberately as a test or just coincidently there happened to be a particularly wet section between them and us. What were we going to do?  Be mice or men?  Our feet were still dry and we hadn’t yet learned that having wet feet wasn’t the end of the world, ‘at the time it did kind of seem that way’, like being permanently defeated by letting our feet get wet. 

Dumb struck like deer in the headlights we just stood there……..  Then…Rachael went first…….. what was she going to do?……..  I didn’t even know…...  It was something in between full blown blatant bush killing and deliberately sinking calf deep.  She didn’t get a triumphant cheer of success from the peanut gallery but she didn’t get scoffed at either, it was good enough.  Then……… it was my turn….. I couldn’t decide……….. I had three choices, around, through or something in between and none of them sounded attractive………. I really bloody didn’t want we feet!………. And then like a moment of clarity it came to me, take your shoes of!!  Holly shit!! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.  “Watch this” I shouted, a raised shoe in each hand, as I stepped right into the center of the muddiest bit.  And watch they all did, watched as I virtually disappeared, instantly sinking waist deep, “holly f*&^ng shit” I yelled as the icy cold mud took my breath away.  Immediately realizing not only was I saturated but the camera was in my pocket a foot deep.  “F&#^$” I shouted again for the second time in less then one second, snatching it out of my pocket and pitching it at Rachael like a base ball, nearly taking her out.

Somehow the camera had survived, but me, I was still stuck in the pit and the three of them were all just standing there looking at me, as if trying to decide if they should be laughing or if they should run over to my rescue. 

I was the first one to laugh.

That was it, I’d learned my lesson, it wasn’t worth trying to keep your shoes dry, just go through the mud, having wet feet actually feels pretty nice. 

Now my problem was that I’d only brought that one pair of pants and no shorts; walked the rest of the day in my underpants. 

Hope everyone is Stupendous!!!!!!!

Love US!!!!!!

A Fish Story‏

Hola Amigos!!!!!

Hope everyone is doing Awesome!!!

Nope, fires aren’t that close to us, we’re safe!

Here’s a story you might like…and some photos to go…

Went for a hike out to an amazing headland with 100m sheer cliffs that dropped straight into the sea.  We could see some climbing bolts and belay stations but no climbers, had us thinking of some of you rock fanatics back home.

O yah this story has nothing to do with hiking, cliffs or rock climbers so I’ll get on with it…Packing for the trip to Tassie we’d borrowed some fishing gear from Rachael’s family, including a 9 foot long 6 pronged spear for impaling fish, they call them Hawaiian slings.  They are for use when you are snorkeling, basically the thing just has a huge rubber band on one end, when you see a fish you load up the rubber, aim, release and the fish is yours, at least in theory, I’d never actually used one before. 

I felt a bit silly as we walked past the other campers holding my snorkeling gear in one hand and a 9 foot spear in the other.  But then I thought, hey I don’t look any sillier then they do standing on the boat ramp haphazardly casting little metal hooks willie nillie into the sea in hopes they might catch the attention of a fish passing by.  No, in fact I just might look like I know what the hell I’m doing, huntin fish that is.

Pulled on the wetsuits, fins, mask, snorkel and spear and plopped in the ocean.  The visibility wasn’t great but it was good enough we could see the immense 10 meter deep blue kelp forests the area was famous for, we could also see some smaller plant life including some beautifully bright green sea lettuce but no fish, none, not even little ones.  That didn’t really matter, the sun was out, it was a beautiful day and we were getting to do some snorkeling. 

“Mabee eee ould ooo in osser aaa orr,” hooted Rachael through her snorkel. 

Easier said than done, as we tried to get closer to shore the kelp go so thick we couldn’t hardly get past it, we had to look for narrow corridors void of kelp we could pass through. You always hear about divers getting tangled up in thick kelp and having to cut themselves free which we hoped wasn’t going to happen as we didn’t have a knife, would a had to have to chew our way out.  Just as I was skimming over the top of some plant life I spotted something, “ahh ha, your mine” I thought as I pulled back the spear.  Possibly I might have been a bit over enthusiastic as I hadn’t even figured out what the creature was I was about to spear yet. 

Armed and ready to fire…wait a minute, what the f--- am I looking at?  Ah, a huge eel, nice I bet we could eat that, emm eel steaks, only how do you cook a 3 foot eel?  The tip of the spear only inches away from the unsuspecting creature…only if it’s an eel where is its head.  I can’t see any mouth or eyes?  Ooo it’s not an eel..ahh it’s a sea snake,  f--- me, aren’t see snakes poisonous, is it going to attack as soon as it notices me, hopefully it can’t bite through two layers of wet suit, shit, should I just spear it now so it can’t attack?  Hold on…if it can’t be an eel because it doesn’t have a head it certainly can’t be a snake either.  Come to think of it, this thing is floating vertically and I can’t even see the other end that disappears into the kelp, is this thing even an animal?  Maybe I should just give it a poke and see if it moves?  HOLLY F*&%ING SHIT!!!  Reverse!!!  Reverse now!!!  Hold on I can’t swim in reverse!  Fuck!  OK turn around slowly, very slowly, don’t bump it with the spear, stay calm, signal to Rachael to turn around too!  Breath deep, shit balls!!  Keep swimming, don’t look back! 

Glad I didn’t tap it, the Sting Ray that got me in El Salvador was probably only the size of an Aunt Jamima pancake, that one was 6 feet long not counting the  3 foot tail, that’s a 9 foot sting ray, ahhhh.   Get me out of here.

“Ut append, how um u urned uround” hooted Rachael. 

Relating what I’d just seen we decided maybe we’ll start to head back, doesn’t seem like the kind of place fish hang out any ways. 

“Ahhh Bla Blaaa AAA” I hear Rachaels snorkel say.  As I look back she’s pointing at two fish that haven’t noticed us, they’re just cruzin by.  No idea what kind they are but certain they are editable, pull back, aim, fire, smack, there’s a respectable looking fish stuck on the end of my spear. 

“Ha, yes, wo hoo, you got him, we’re having fish for dinner” Rachael’s chanting as she does a swimming victory dance.  I on the other hand am slightly dub founded, yes I definitely want fish for dinner but I don’t think I actually thought I’d hit it first try, and it’s far from dead as I hit in the middle and not the gills.  It’s flailing all over the place trying to get free, blood going everywhere. Here’s where you’re supposed to have a mesh sack you put the fish in and trail a ways behind you with a rope so if your unluckily enough to be spotted by a shark passing by he goes for the bloody fish in the far off bag and not the bloody fish in your hand.  We had brought a plastic bag just in case we got a fish but as this one was far from dead and of course we didn’t have a knife to finish it off either I figured I’d just leave it on the end of the spear flailing around leaving a nice trail of blood.  One fish was all we needed for dinner anywho.

Shark!!!  Shrieked Rachael as she swam on top of me, pushing me underwater.  For a second I thought, hoped maybe she was joking, but even through the mask I could see in her eyes she wasn’t, she was white.  “4 feet long and this big around,” she was saying, holding her arms in a hoop just about as big as they’d go. 

Maybe I can stab it with the spear if I have to, I thought, though its gunna be difficult with this flailing fish on the end, sticking my head back in the water I looked around…no shark that I could see…maybe he was behind me…I spun..Nope couldn’t seem him there either, must have just swum on by.

Let’s get the hell out of here we thought simultaneously, booking it back to shore holding the spear as far out of the water as I could.  Rachael just hopped out onto the rocks but I couldn’t, still holding the dam spear but wanting to get out of the water asap I basically just got up some speed and beached/battled rammed myself up onto some seaweed and sharp barnacles. 

Thanked the fish for letting us eat him for dinner, chopped off his head, gutted, scalled, wrapped in aluminum foil and chucked on a bed of hot coals.  Ooo Yes it was good. 

Back to NH in 6 weeks, time flies!

Love US