Stanley Island
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sat 13 Jul 2019 12:02
Stanley Island is just 12nm from Bathurst Bay and close to Flinders Island (Flinders being an Australian nautical pioneer and hero who first mapped the whole of the Australian coast). Flinders Island has a good anchorage that is the preferred alternative to Bathurst Bay if you have time to get there in daylight. It is also from where you can walk to the sites of former aboriginal settlements in caves on Stanley Island. Alternatively, as we found, you can day anchor directly at Stanley Island and with enough tidal depth, dinghy over to the beach and follow a path up to the caves. No longer occupied, the caves are owned and managed by the aboriginal community and access facilities are provided for visitors including, as evidenced by the visitors book, many passing yachties. Several of the cave pictures are of sailing ships that visited in the 18th Century and, being alongside the pictures of the animals that were important in daily life, one can speculate upon the impact that these ships must have made.
From Stanley we set out on an overnight passage up the outer of two shipping lanes along this stretch of the coast towards Portland Roads.