Diving and exploring and beach soccer

Whitehaven Beach, noted for its very white,"squeaky" sand.

Wednesday 25th August.

Was delighted to see "Volante" , a Wharram tiki cat about 26ft, arrive this morning as I was out fishing. Rob and Anna, marine biologists and Anna's sister Claire had been in Tongue Bay the previous night and their boat was bumped by a sleeping whale. The shock of hitting them caused the whale to sound and for a moment they were afraid that it may damage them with its tail, however it slipped away without causing more than heart failure for all on board "Volante". We decided to go for a dive along some rock drop offs near the entrance to Hill inlet and saw Coral Trout, Eagle rays, and plenty of other fish. This would be a great dive just before full tide with the chance of better visibility. Later on in the day I went lure fishing both from the beach and from the dinghy and hooked a large flathead which spat out the hook just as I beached it and I also had a number of strikes and hook upsamongst the mangroves but was unable to land a single fish.. Later I got involved in a game of beach soccer and was left exhausted after about half an hour. Some Italian campers visited our side of the famous Whitehaven Beach and had to be warned about the ever present stingrays, numbering in their hundreds, some of them nestling within a metre of the beach in only centimetres of water. It would be very unpleasant to accidentally stand on one and get lashed by the barbed tail. They secrete a slime on the barbs which is very painful but also causes very severe ulceration over the ensuing weeks that the wound needs to heal. The campers were also intrigued by the soldier crabs which number in the thousands and it took a bit of persuading before they would let one of them crawl across their hands and to realise that they were in fact quite harmless.