Christmas in May

The childhood memories of the night before Christmas are long long ago. The feeling of trying to go to sleep so that you would in due course wake up to Christmas morning. As we get older and jaded this is not such a big deal and days all roll on. I however, still experience the night before Christmas feeling  every year in May, and as I write this I am just 3 more sleeps. Every year in May I go away with a group of my best mates on a fishing trip to Weipa on the north western point of Cape York. We hire a houseboat, stock it with good food, fine rums and a small fortune in fishing gear and set sail into the wild wonderful expanses of the gulf.

We have been doing these trips together on and off for almost 30 years. It has been an almost religious pilgrimage on the houseboat for 12 years in a row and on Sunday night I will try to get a few hours’ sleep before getting in the Ute and driving to Cairns at 3 in the morning to catch a flight to Weipa.

The boys come from all over and rendezvous in the bar at Cairns airport and it is often the only time of the year we will meet, but best mates are always best mates.

We will fly to Weipa, do our shopping, load the boat, ice down some beers and be fishing by lunch time Tuesday.

I will try to take some photos of both the fishing, the scenery and the food and do a blog post either up there, or, more likely when I get home but I will pop up a few pics of previous trips.

It is wild, barren country, but in some areas it is spectacular. Places like Red Cliffs and Pera heads as a contrast to the mangrove swamps of Pine Bay and the Nominade River. It is mud banks and barramundi, sandy beaches and fly fishing and blue water with Tuna and monster bull sharks and all from the rustic comfort of the floating fishing shack called Tillytoo.