I'd heard too many stories about Australian spiders to act the hero, but Chris came to the rescue and removed it for me, saying it was just a Huntsman - the same as the one that they used to keep in their house as it eats all the other bugs and doesn't harm humans.
Kelly, Jo and I walked across the road to the almost deserted beach with Miller and we all got in the sea. I'd arrived prepared but the girls had to strip to their underwear, whilst Miller saw no need to be that modest. When he'd had enough, however, he wasn't too keen to put his clothes on and had a bit of a hissy fit when his mother insisted as his skin had to be protected from the sun:
It's a very well equipped holiday house - there's even a kayak in the garage plus 4 bikes of varying sizes, so I went on a short exploratory cycle and trail walk on Saturday morning:
Chris had arranged for us all to meet his Mum and Dad and brother Matt for brunch at a nice little cafe in nearby Yankalilla. Miller enjoyed the hippo ornament in the garden there:
We took Kelly and Miller back to the house for their lunchtime nap and the rest of us then headed for the nice Smiling Samoyeds brewery at Myponga for a couple of beers:
After a stroll round Myponga market, we headed back to Carrickalinga, where some of Chris' friends and their families were arriving to help celebrate his birthday weekend. Brother Matt presented Chris with his gift from the family - a retro board, just like the one Chris used to have when he was young - until Matt broke it!:
It wasn't long before they were all trying to re-live their youths:
We watched the changing phases of the sunset that evening:
The big event of the birthday weekend was the fishing trip planned for Sunday. Four of us - Chris, his Dad David and pal Anthony and I - left the house just before 6:30 am and drove to the nearby port to meet up with 5 of Chris' pals for our day-long adventure. The 20 metre vessel had 2 crew - the captain and "driver" Scott and his mate Josh who was the one that set up the rods and bait etc.
After loading the "Eskies" containing our food and beer for the day, we were on our way by 7:15 am:
It was about an hour steaming time until we got to our first fishing grounds somewhere between Kangaroo Island and Cape Jervis. We were after snapper here primarily. Josh baited the rods with pilchard and squid first time around but, after that, it was up to us. No casting - the rods had sinkers and the fish were bottom feeders anyway.
We only caught 5 snapper between us that run - but I'm happy to say I got one of them. Next stop would be out on the high seas, beyond Kangaroo Island. Whilst the first steam had been a bit choppy and I had initially been concerned that I may suffer from sea sickness, I had remembered to keep my eyes on the horizon and felt OK. Now it was a whole new ball-game however. Suddenly, the seas were high alright and the horizon had shrunk dramatically. Now we were in large swells, but again, I was OK. Not so a couple of Chris' pals, one of whom had retched non-stop since we left port and remained that way during the whole 9 hour trip.
On our second stop, we were still looking for snapper, but also whiting this time. Some of the guys cottoned on quickly and did rather well here, but I struggled. I never got one fish, but they got plenty of my bait.
We steamed off again to what was little more than a jagged granite rock in the middle of the ocean. To me, we went frighteningly close to the rocks, but I guess our skipper knew what he was doing with his boat. This time we were after salmon. No bait required this time - just lures which we fed out from the back of our vessel and let the salmon shoals chase us. They snapped at the lures, which were being towed along the surface. You knew all about it when you got a hit and it took a fair effort to haul them in, but they were plentiful and soon we'd had our fill. This was the best part of the trip for me:
Our 4th stop was an attempt to snare some tuna - not easy. Again, just lures were used. We got one bite from a small tuna, but lost it, so after half an hour or so of this, we headed back to port, arriving there about 4 pm, where we posed for a team photo whilst divvying-up the spoils:
You would think that would be that, wouldn't you? As it turned out, we'd hardly started. Although Josh had gutted the snapper, we still had to de-scale it and, worst of all, fillet and skin the salmon, which isn't at all like the Atlantic salmon we're used to - it was a hell of a job, and cleaning up afterwards took some time too - so much so that the girls were wondering if they'd ever eat that night. We made it in the end, and, thanks to some kitchen ingenuity from Jo and Lorene, we had a very nice meal in the end.
So that was it. Monday morning was just a get up, eat up, tidy up morning and we were back in Semaphore early afternoon. Both Chris and I realised that the trip had taken more out of us than we thought - we were both knackered.
Today (Tuesday) has just been a local day for Jo and I - she didn't sleep well last night and we had chores - washing and shopping - to do anyway, so we just lay on the beach for a while then went back to Sweet Amber Brew Cafe for lunch.
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