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| Day 114 |
30 July 2000 |
| Gulf of Carpentaria |
| "A Rough Life" |
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In the middle of breakfast a plane soars over Gove harbour. Greg
and I call out in unison: 'Here come our fuel filters!' Gary is
at the airport to meet them. The near gale of the last few days
has died down to a steady twenty knot trade-wind. Nothing now
prevents us from getting on our way to the Pennefather River.
As usual it feels as if we are leaving too soon. The people of
Gove and the nearby town of Nhulunbuy have been so friendly and
generous that I wish we could stay longer. It will be hard to
forget these helpful strangers, every second one clad in steel
capped boots and khaki shirts with Nabalco, the company that
runs the aluminium refinery and the port, embroidered across the
chest. This seemed to be the uniform for the whole town.
We motor out into the Gulf of Carpentaria, past Cape Arnhem,
named after one of two ships under the command of Jan Carstensz
who was another VOC captain. Arnhem and Pera were the next two
ships to visit Cape York Peninsula after the Duyfken. They
arrived at the peninsula in 1623 and covered much the same part
of the coast as Jansz had sailed 17 years before, although
Carstensz appears to have ventured further inland in search of
trade, a search that still yielded nothing of interest to the
Dutch. On their return to the Indies Pera sailed by the way they
had come, via the coast of what we know as New Guinea. The
captain of Arnhem, on the other hand, decided that a westerly
course was the fastest way back. By taking this route he found
the land that today bears the name of his ship. He explored and
charted Arnhem Land before returning to Batavia.
Though the wind has eased considerably overnight there is still
an uncomfortably steep swell in the gulf. We can barely make
three knots against it. As Duyfken leaps from each crest and
dives into the troughs, shaking and juddering from masthead to
keel, I reflect that we certainly made the right decision to
wait for the conditions to abate before leaving Gove. The poor
little ship is getting shaken up badly enough as it is. She
wasn't designed for this, slogging into a head sea under motors.
I'm not sure I was either. I'm feeling decidedly queasy.
We are not used to being at sea with nothing about to run out.
We have plenty of gas, so hot drinks are back on the menu. Jane
has bought plenty of fresh supplies, so tonight's dinner is
stir-fried chicken with capsicum and broccoli. Dessert is five
squares of chocolate each. Chocolate! Broccoli feels like
decadence enough, but chocolate! And this is on top of the
banana and cinnamon muffins Ben knocked up for smoko. It wasn't
like this on the original Duyfken.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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