WE FISH AND SOCIALIZE AT THE DUKE AND UNCOVER SOME FAMILY HISTORY - (MARCH 2105)

Folk flock to The Duke for three reasons. Fishing, scenery, relaxation. We did it all. For me, strangely enough, the highlight was the fishing. I'm still yet to catch my first large salmon (they still weren't running on this part of the coast) but the herring catches more than made up for that small disappointment.  And let's face facts.....salmon are really only 'neighbour's fish' in any event (to be given away and eaten by someone else who actually likes them!).

Fresh herring on the other hand, well that's an entirely different story. Mine host Chris had confirmed advice I had previously received from prior visitors to this wonderful place that casting off the rocks anywhere at the Nares Island channel would produce fish, and, my real target for this trip, squid.

My first sortie to this most picturesque of fishing haunts was in the company of Tom, one of our very good camp neighbours on our arrival (more later). He and his partner Emma were marvellous company, and I was delighted to have been able to share with Tom the secret of the WA herring rig. He, like me, could not believe that fish would strike a non-baited hook until he actually had the experience.

I fished the Nares rocks on a number of occasions, including one on which I managed to convince Liz that she really should come and take in the scenery if nothing else (I was really on a secret mission to see if I could instill some flicker of enthusiasm in her for this wonderful pastime.....and, of course, with the bag limit now reduced to 12 fish, her presence meant that I..we...could take up to 24 fish legally).

We parked the cruiser on the nearby beach in perfect fishing weather, warm with just the hint of a breeze. 

Our destination lay beyond the end of the beach strip and cross the rocks to a point just past the small channel between Nares Island on the left of the shot and the mainland. It is a bit of a scramble, but worth every step.  I had actually taken the precaution of making a previous trek across the rocks without being laden down with all my fishing gear and knew the easiest path.

This is another spot where that old maxim 'a fish is a bonus' is true.  From the rocky shelf on which we had set up we could look back to the beach in front of our park on The Duke of Orleans Bay, 

and, in the other direction, out onto the Southern Ocean and the peaks of a couple of the many islands which dot this seascape.

But enough of this scenery stuff, we were here on a mission. We were here to fish, well, I was here to fish and Liz was really being the dutiful companion at this point. Here the very narrow channel between Nares Island and the mainland is quite apparent. The water does hoot through here on the top of the tides, but on this occasion our nautical environment was an absolute picture of serenity. Days down here do not come much better than this one.

The WA herring rig is deadly, but it does occasionally develop a mind of its own when the trace decides, for reasons beyond me, to do a jig around the float. Keeping all in order presents an annoying delay when the fish are on the chew, but it is critical to success.

With all back on track the herring just kept coming. Even after all this time in the West, I still marvel at the fact that the rig of choice works.

A top shaped float with a small hole for burly, a metre long trace and a long shanked no. 6 hook with a piece of luminous tube threaded down its shank, and that’s it.  No bait required.  On a fairly rapid retrieval, the tube creates bubbles in the water and presents as a tiny bait fish to the unsuspecting herring.  When they are on the bite, they launch at the passing hook with amazing speed.  It is not uncommon before a strike is made to see splash after splash behind the incoming hook as fish make a run at it. 

This is exciting stuff. And then, bang, weight goes on the line and another fish is on its way to the creel.

The real (reel?...irresistible!) trick is to then keep pressure on the flapping fish as it comes onto the rock ledge.  I have to confess to having lost quite a few large bull herring as I prepared to hoist them up to where I was standing, before they come off the hook and into the bucket.

On every occasion I fished Nares I had company.  These Pacific Gulls were on easy street. As I scaled, headed and gutted before leaving, these locals would swoop on head after head until sated.  I watched in utter amazement one day to see a greedy gull gulp down six large bull herring heads before it flew off to its nearby rocky perch on Nares Island with such a bulging crop it looked for all the world as though it had suddenly developed a very nasty tumour.

But the highlight of the day in question was, for me, what is captured in this shot. It had nothing to do with fish or fowl, well not directly that is.

I had managed to persuade the “You know I hate fishing” person to at least hold the rod I had set with a floating squid jag.  “Come on love, you are sitting there anyway...all you have to do is watch the float and yell if it dips below the surface.  How hard’s that?” Now Liz will deny the truth of my next comment until she is exhausted of breath.  

To my great relief, within a relatively short time I heard a rather nervously excited call. “I think something has happened to the float.” It had, not a large specimen, but a squid nevertheless. Well done, Lizzie.

“Well I didn’t really do anything.”  “Yes you did, I can’t hold two rods at once.” Triumph!  Could this be the start of something?  Has the thrill of the capture sunk in? Looking at this later photo of Liz and squid, I’ll let you be the judge.  A forced grin, perchance? But at least it was as start I thought, with an optimism I usually reserve for each time I set out to plunder the ocean.  Then reality set it...it was a one off.  I was not pestered to take a fishing companion with me as I sallied forth thereafter. Each entreaty to join me was met with a silence which can only be described as eloquent!

What a great afternoon it had been, but I knew it was time to go. Back to the cruiser we trudged and off back to camp 










where the day’s catch was displayed before filleting.  I had only kept the largest of the fish hooked. At least twenty plus had been returned to their finny mothers to grow bigger.







And so it went at Nares, each time I ventured across the rocks. Wind, times and tides seemed irrelevant....this place just teams with fish, and here some monster squid do lurk. This is the largest I have ever caught.  The prayers being uttered as I hauled this leviathan of the deep up the slope of the rock face knowing it was only just jagged, would have put the most devout to shame.



Skinned, tenderised (a fancy name for bashing the hell out of it with a meat mallet) and cut into strips, quickly fried and then left to simmer in a rich, oregano herbed, tomato, onion and garlic sauce, this whopper was more than enough for both of us. And then there is the added bonus, the tentacles. Ideal whiting bait, now frozen and awaiting an opportunity to shine.

I was not only one busy in the galley whilst we were at The Duke.  Liz had a couple of fits of inspiration. Miss “I hate cooking” turned out a batch of her renowned Scotch eggs

And another of her specialities, a tempting tasty trifle.  Well, there goes any though of dietary restraint for the next few nights at least!




Apart from all this fishing, we did have a jolly social time here as well, at least for the first few days.  Indeed, on our first night under the awning, we were joined by the park matriarch Wendy Royle, who, as I think I mentioned  in previous despatches, is an absolute wag. She had Liz in stitches on more than one occasion with her dry and very observant wit.

It was during one of our chats with Wendy that we had another of those experiences which demonstrate that life on the road never ceases to throw up the most unexpected surprises. I am not entirely sure how the subject arose, but my quest to locate my long lost cousin Allan was mentioned.  I knew that Wendy had been on the land in the Esperance area and asked if she may have heard of him. Heard of him.......wait for it....of course she had heard of him, his farm was right next to theirs in the Cascade area, about 100 kms north-west of Esperance,  They had been immediate neighbours for years!

None of the myriad of coincidental meetings in all our years of travelling had quite prepared me for this one. I was stunned. Wendy proceeded to provide me with all that I had been seeking to discover, including the fact that one of Allan's daughters ran the Jetty Motel in Esperance. I have already told of our subsequent meeting and chat. If all this had been written into the script of a play or movie, or the subject of a book, can you just imagine the collective scepticism.  How does he think will believe that was an accidental meeting?? This really was mind-blowing. Thank you, Wendy, you saved me a deal of detective style leg work!



When we had first arrived at The Duke, we soon met our young neighbours, Emma, Tom, and Wolf, their very large and impossibly sooky German Shepherd. Tom and I fished together, and we did enjoy a couple of happy hours, one of which included the neighbours on the other side.

And here we experienced another of those ‘who said there were six points of separation?’ moments.  We had noted that Enid and Mick’s mobile home bore SA plates, but when we started chatting we soon discovered that Mick had served for many moons with the SAS.  So??  



The President of the South Australian SAS association, a man we discovered is well known to our new neighbour, is none other than a shipmate with whom I sailed my last Adelaide – Lincoln yacht race, the redoubtable Kerry Lampard. Apart from our sailing connections, Kerry and his charming wife Tricia had hosted Liz and me to a memorable dinner in Clare (where they have a few acres) at the beginning of the adventure on which we are now embarked.  Small world indeed.

We were sad to farewell Emma and Tom (who had actually extended by one night to allow Tom to learn the finer points of herring fishing!) as they headed off to Norseman and across the Nullarbor to Adelaide and beyond as the next step in their planned twelve month odyssey around Australia.  We had particularly enjoyed the company of this bright, enthusiastic and thoughtful young couple and they left with our best wishes that their trip will be all they are hoping for.

One couple leaves, another arrives. This is ever the way of park life. Wendy and Mick, with the superdog Aero, took Mick and Enid's site a day or so after they departed. They were great fun, and when there is a determination to enjoy a happy hour with new mates, a chilly evening wind and falling darkness are nothing but challenges to be met with fleecy tops and steely determination (a couple of tots of Pussers Rum helps)


Not all of our stay at The Duke was plain sailing and jolly good fun.  On the afternoon Tom and I had been belting the herring at Nares Island, I had been keeping a weather eye on a mass of very dark clouds building to the west. It reached the point that I suggested to Tom that we had better scale what we had with speed and return to camp post haste.  If ever I have seen a serious thunder storm brewing, this was it, and the girls were 'home alone'.

As it was, despite my determinedly rapid hobble across the rocks and back along the beach to the cruiser we didn't quite make it. Horizontal rain greeted our arrival back on the Nares Island track and continued to make driving a misery all the way back to camp, where we were greeted with the sight of poor Emma and Liz, soaked to the skin, valiantly tussling with the canvas of Emma and Tom's camper trailer verandah. 

Fortunately neither of us suffered any damage, despite the fact that Liz somewhat breathlessly reported that she thought the initial blast of the storm was about to tear our awning off its restraining guy ropes and fling it over the van.




Needless to say, the large tie down was soon secured over our awning and safety was assured. We jointly conquered the antics of the camper trailer canvas and retired to don dry cloths. And, as we found out on this an a couple of other occasions, when it rains at The Duke, it pours.






On this particular occasion I estimated at least 5 mils was dumped on us in the space of less than thirty minutes. The edges of the hard ironstone roadways were soon flowing rivers, but the real beauty of our site was that the lawns soon soaked up all that fell around us.





This was the first of several really nasty patches of weather which did mar our stay to some extent, but that aside, for us The Duke will remain high on our 'Must Return Some Day' list.

Before we move on we shall take a quick tour of the nearby beaches, one of which, Wharton Beach is considered to be amongst WA's finest (and then I'll only be a fortnight behind on the blog!!)