We did our shopping early but did not buy any meat as we planned to do some serious fishing later in the day and were expecting to leave
Exmouth and head into the
Cape Range National Park for some beach camping with no facilities tomorrow. We met the Adcocks at the Bundegi Wharft as recommended to us by Spencer, a "feral" traveller we have seen on a number of occassions who told us he was catching Queenfish with no bait.
I had told Dorothy that it was a really great spot because the girls could sunbake and swim right beside
the wharf whilst the boys fished. We all had a fabulous day swimming, sunning and fishing. Both David and Rob caught huge Queenfish although David was not satisified with just one. There were two meals in just one fish but David was mesmerised by the clear water and the sight of such huge fish. The fishing technique was fun too. First, they started with triple hooks and just jiggled their lines amongst the mass of schooling small fish which we thought were anchovies. This was either a quick snag or took an hour. Half the challenge was to get the bait! The next step was to use the live anchovies as bait to catch the big Queenfish seen circling below
the wharf. The boys had many big fish get off their hooks including a 1m Queenfish for David and then a big cod for Rob that David also caught and got away.
We had our catch for the day but realised we probably couldn't eat it since we were booked to go on a night dive to the Navy Pier - reputed to be one of the top 10 dives in Australia.
We set up David'd underwater video gear and dive torches etc and waited to be collected from our camping ground as per the day before. The bus never came and a very disappointed David and Michelle made our way to the office to make phone calls. We finally realised they had gone without us and reluctantly packed up our campervan and drove into town to stick a note on the
shop door asking for an explanation. We had booked and pre-paid this dive and were intending to leave
Exmouth in the morning.
In the meantime, we realised we could at least enjoy our fresh catch and marinated the Queenfish fillets in olive oil, fish sauce, white wine, garlic, ginger, fresh chillies, fresh lemon grass, fresh corriander, basil and lemon juice. Cooked on the hotplate of our gas cooker and served with raw salad of snow peas, broccoli and red capsicum - YUM!
The diveshop finally rang at 10pm and apologised profusely - it was all their fault, they had simply not checked the booking sheet. Could we come into the
shop in the morning and sort it out? Of course we could.