Thank you Adrian and Paul, much appreciate your good wishes.
We had a wonderful time with the kids and three grandkids, got a great weather window right up to the last day.
As to fishing, we went out but the heavy rain that they had been having meant mud coloured water all the way out to the heads (12 KM) and at least 5 k out.
We fished outside as the river was just too muddy. The skipper tried hard to put us on to fish but only caught small ones. Son in Law Simon caught a nice Coral Trout, just legal, Other son in law caught a 1m long "Barra" as he claims. Looked like a Barracuda to me! I caught two legal Sweetlip and between us we caught about 40 small fish (Cod, Nannygai, Sweetlip,etc, too small to bother taking pics)
The boys were dead keen and fished 65 minutes out of every hour.
Toward the end of the day we had several fish savaged by either Barracuda or the men in grey suits. The attached pic shows one that beat me to my sashimi.
Took the legal fish to the restaurant at the Marina who had told us they would cook them for us. Did a nice job but $40.00 per person plus chips extra. No vegies or any other trimmings. I thought the sashimi thieves that we struck out fishing had relatives in the restaurant.
We struck some weather on the way home, left Port Douglas at 9AM Thursday, drove to Cairns were our flight was delayed due to storms in Sydney. When we finally took off we got to Singleton where we were put into a holding pattern for what seemed a long time and then got diverted back to Brisbane. Got to a hotel there at 1 AM, had a snack, finally went to bed but woken at 4.45 AM to catch an early flight to Sydney. Buggered when we got home on Friday.
Could have been worse, it looks like FNQ is due for another hammering from a cyclone so pleased to have missed that. Having a big impact on tourism with all shops complaining that times are tough as people stay away due to the cyclones and stingers.
Cheers
Paikea (Hank)
