Day 10
Tuesday 3 October
Hong, Andrew and I join the Bowen family for breakfast, diving into the communal craziness of kids reaching for bread, eggs being cooked on the barbie, cups of tea and the crackle of the open fire. We’re underneath an old sand miner’s house where life happens in the open sided basement. The view is treetops, the sea, the cat peacefully at anchor and the hummocky outline of Lizard Island on the horizon.
Sam Dibella, from Queensland Parks & Wildlife, races past in his tinny, off to another day of turtle tagging. Last year we had the Chief Turtle Researcher Ian Bell with us doing the same thing but he’s unable to join us, so Sam’s taken time off from work to come and be part of our program. The decision makers don’t see turtle tagging with Indigenous people as core business so won’t fund Sam to do it. He is clearly passionate about it, bringing his whole family up to camp on this beach for the week.
To catch a turtle the tinny follows it closely allowing the Bama to leap on their backs, grabbing the top and bottom of their carapace (shell). The turtles defence is to dive, taking the person down with them. The hunter then pushes the bottom of the shell down and the top up, forcing the turtle to swim to the surface. The boat comes over and the ancient massive beast is wrestled into the tinny. It is measured and tagged, before being released, with nothing more than a slight loss of dignity.
This year Alex is Sam’s key turtle catcher. Alex has caught many turtles and dugong to eat during his young life. In the context of this project Alex contributes his skills and knowledge to turtle research, collecting valuable data in support of the work being done by Ian Bell and Sam.
Turtle and dugong hunting is a highly sensitive issue. The Bama have been hunting them for thousands of years but the species are now severely depleted. This is due to the multiple impacts of tourism, fishing, habitat depletion, boat strike, feral pigs, environmental degradation and poor resource management. Hope Vale currently is the only community to have a turtle and dugong management plan. We believe that the way forward is to involve indigenous communities in education, research and planning.
In the afternoon Garry, Lara and baby Finnley Sunlight arrive at Cape Flattery. Finnley is on his first ever camping expedition. They are accompanied by Natalie Davey, the other core Pelican team member, and Aurora, her four-year-old daughter. It’s the first time we have all been together on this project. Lara has a ten-year relationship with the Bama having worked with a number of Government departments in the Cape York region. There’s lots of cooing over young Finnley whose middle name is in honour of the Elder Sunlight Bassini from Port Stewart. They set up camp on the edge of the beach.
We were hoping that the crew could have taken a bit of time out today. All morning they work ticking off maintenance jobs that need doing. In the afternoon Pelican 1 heads over to support the turtle tagging operation, and the chance for timeout slips by again. We grab a bunch of Bama youngsters to go with Pelican, to observe and be part of the tagging activities. This also allows Sandy, our gifted photographer, to get her golden evening shot of Pelican under sail with a bunch of Bama kids on the bow. (Watch out for a full-page article due out in The Age within a week or so.)
Hong, Andrew and I have another meal in the Bowen camp, with the kids wildly playing upstairs. I watch as Jimmy is making a sandwich and a particularly hard thump upstairs showers his post dinner snack with sand, dislodged from between the floorboards. He yells out in language but is ignored.
There’s a convoy of vehicles due in as soon as the tide drops enough to allow people to drive along the beach. Charmaine, Estelle and Des’s youngest surviving daughter, grabs the troopy (Toyota troop carrier) and we head up the steep sandy incline out of Connie’s Beach, as our campsite is known. At the top is a Telstra relay tower for CDMA phones. We stop beside it ensuring that every phone user in the car is suddenly back in touch with the outside world. Messages over the past week are retrieved and answered.
A little further along we can see the whole Cape Flattery sand mine spread out below us. The mine is owned by the Japanese company, Mitsubishi. They have kindly agreed to help us with their big loader vehicle, if we ever get stuck coming in or out of either Connie’s Beach or the sand dunes 17 kilometres down the beach. Without this back up, we would have trouble ensuring we can do this Flattery camp.
We drop down past the crocodile swamp with its sinister looking black water shimmering in the moonlight onto the beach. During this whole
period we didn’t see a single croc but we know they are around us all the time. It’s never far from our minds whenever we are near the sea,
rivers or swamps like this.
Marty shows us his amazing collection of pics and video of Hope Vale life.
Charmaine pulls up the troopy, waiting for the convoy to arrive. The ocean beach is stunning in the light of the moon, a few days away from full. We can see the loom of the approaching convoy’s lights in the far distance occasionally flaring up into the night sky. The moonlight easily picks out the white water of the crashing seas. The lights of the mine’s ocean pier marks the northern end of the beach whilst the southern end disappears into the dark horizon.
There is rubbish scattered everywhere, blown onto the beach from fishing boats over decades by the relentless trade winds. On the car stereo we listen to Estelle’s favourite country and western music -an American voice lamenting the joys of his relationship to his son. The cars suddenly swing into view and are alongside us. First question is “did you get my smokes?” and with a brief answer and an exchange of goods, all vehicles head back to the Connie’s Beach campsite. Several people have driven all the way in from Hope Vale so that they can be onboard Pelican at dawn tomorrow, for our day-sail to Lizard Island. Estelle now has a complete list of all the people who want to go, and we can go to bed.
Hong, Andrew and I join the Bowen family for breakfast, diving into the communal craziness of kids reaching for bread, eggs being cooked on the barbie, cups of tea and the crackle of the open fire. We’re underneath an old sand miner’s house where life happens in the open sided basement. The view is treetops, the sea, the cat peacefully at anchor and the hummocky outline of Lizard Island on the horizon.
Sam Dibella, from Queensland Parks & Wildlife, races past in his tinny, off to another day of turtle tagging. Last year we had the Chief Turtle Researcher Ian Bell with us doing the same thing but he’s unable to join us, so Sam’s taken time off from work to come and be part of our program. The decision makers don’t see turtle tagging with Indigenous people as core business so won’t fund Sam to do it. He is clearly passionate about it, bringing his whole family up to camp on this beach for the week.
To catch a turtle the tinny follows it closely allowing the Bama to leap on their backs, grabbing the top and bottom of their carapace (shell). The turtles defence is to dive, taking the person down with them. The hunter then pushes the bottom of the shell down and the top up, forcing the turtle to swim to the surface. The boat comes over and the ancient massive beast is wrestled into the tinny. It is measured and tagged, before being released, with nothing more than a slight loss of dignity.
This year Alex is Sam’s key turtle catcher. Alex has caught many turtles and dugong to eat during his young life. In the context of this project Alex contributes his skills and knowledge to turtle research, collecting valuable data in support of the work being done by Ian Bell and Sam.
Turtle and dugong hunting is a highly sensitive issue. The Bama have been hunting them for thousands of years but the species are now severely depleted. This is due to the multiple impacts of tourism, fishing, habitat depletion, boat strike, feral pigs, environmental degradation and poor resource management. Hope Vale currently is the only community to have a turtle and dugong management plan. We believe that the way forward is to involve indigenous communities in education, research and planning.
In the afternoon Garry, Lara and baby Finnley Sunlight arrive at Cape Flattery. Finnley is on his first ever camping expedition. They are accompanied by Natalie Davey, the other core Pelican team member, and Aurora, her four-year-old daughter. It’s the first time we have all been together on this project. Lara has a ten-year relationship with the Bama having worked with a number of Government departments in the Cape York region. There’s lots of cooing over young Finnley whose middle name is in honour of the Elder Sunlight Bassini from Port Stewart. They set up camp on the edge of the beach.
Tim,
Garry, Lara, baby Finnley & Natalie.
Hong, Andrew and I have another meal in the Bowen camp, with the kids wildly playing upstairs. I watch as Jimmy is making a sandwich and a particularly hard thump upstairs showers his post dinner snack with sand, dislodged from between the floorboards. He yells out in language but is ignored.
Hong, ANZ, joins the kids on Pelican turtle tagging
A little further along we can see the whole Cape Flattery sand mine spread out below us. The mine is owned by the Japanese company, Mitsubishi. They have kindly agreed to help us with their big loader vehicle, if we ever get stuck coming in or out of either Connie’s Beach or the sand dunes 17 kilometres down the beach. Without this back up, we would have trouble ensuring we can do this Flattery camp.
We drop down past the crocodile swamp with its sinister looking black water shimmering in the moonlight onto the beach. During this whole
period we didn’t see a single croc but we know they are around us all the time. It’s never far from our minds whenever we are near the sea,
rivers or swamps like this.
Marty shows us his amazing collection of pics and video of Hope Vale life.
There is rubbish scattered everywhere, blown onto the beach from fishing boats over decades by the relentless trade winds. On the car stereo we listen to Estelle’s favourite country and western music -an American voice lamenting the joys of his relationship to his son. The cars suddenly swing into view and are alongside us. First question is “did you get my smokes?” and with a brief answer and an exchange of goods, all vehicles head back to the Connie’s Beach campsite. Several people have driven all the way in from Hope Vale so that they can be onboard Pelican at dawn tomorrow, for our day-sail to Lizard Island. Estelle now has a complete list of all the people who want to go, and we can go to bed.
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