20.07S 148.54E  Monday 1^st September  6.00am start as planned but incredibly in our remote anchorage last night we somehow managed to watch Australian TV!  Our flat screen is only really there to watch films through the MP3 player or Playstation.  Amazing really and as we haven’t seen any news or in fact any TV for a year…… we overdosed last night.  We are so out of touch – horrendous hurricane in Jamaica, riots in Thailand, evacuations in Louisiana and advertisements that go on, and on and on and on!!  We don’t miss it but it was great to get a ‘fix’. The tides are incredible here – five and a half meters!  Imagine, we rose over 15 feet in height during the night – and the waves crashing on the nearby reef was an eerie sound to say the least.

Another lovely day today – sunny but still with a chill in the air we motored all day as there wasn’t a breath of wind and until 12 noon we had two knots of current against us before it turned again in our favour.  We are now moored in seven meters of clear water down Nara Inlet, Hook Island.  Unfortunately we are not alone, this is a busy anchorage with lots of boats and the sulphur crested cockatoos have become so used to being fed they landed on our boat in anticipation of a meal which was a real treat for us even though I know they can be destructive.

Hello, ‘ello, ‘ello………..

Bird………..’on the wire’………

And then there were two…….

We saw a breaching whale today – honestly!  I wasn’t quick enough to photograph it though.

The gas solution was short lived and after cooking a delicious lamb curry last night with all my fresh ingredients: ginger, garlic, coriander, lemongrass and sesame oil it gave up the ghost.  I am resorting to the barbecue now but can use a saucepan directly over the flame.

The latest worry is the engine again – there seems to be oil intermittently spraying out of the breather pipe.  It’s not overheating, doesn’t smoke, starts up first time, ticks over like a sewing machine and sounds sweet……what can the problem be?  Possibly worn valves?  We have cleaned the air filter again – our oil filters never arrived in Mackay.  We are just not sure how serious the problem is and whether to stop before Darwin (with our time constraints) or whether to push onwards….I suspect we will opt for the latter unless the problem gets worse.

Huge rocks here…..a bit fjord-like………