Jan 15 – Lakes Entrance

Another nice day at our exclusive campground. The only humans were some walkers who came around the lake edge track and went back along the road to their car at the other end of the walk. One car with kayaks drove in and checked the place out but seemed to decide it was too difficult to drag their kayaks to the lake. And as the wind eased during the day more small boats came cruising up the lake – only one actually stopping in our bay (“our” bay….now known as Keating Bay…. to go with all the other landmarks found, claimed and named by the Keating Klan).

As the wind died down a little, we shifted our fishing spot around out of Keating Bay and into the main lake. Aim and Cam went exploring while Lach and Josh fished. We were mostly casting lures which is perfect for the boys as they aren’t very patient with leaving the line out for too long before they start winding the reel. Not organised enough to have proper bait, there was a raid on Aim’s fridge for anything that might attract a bigun’. On went the ham – not just any ham but honey ham. A big bite and what felt like a truck tyre on the end of the line, in was wound a big flathead. Geez it had a big mouth on it. 73cm on the fish ruler – it was officially declared “big”. Not long later it (she) was put back in the water to swim away. Aim found a nice size mussel in the lake and that quickly caught a small bream – obviously the bait of choice (after honey ham) if they could be found in any great number.

Lach and Josh drove into town for some supplies (the trawler was unmanned it was just half a kilo of prawns from the seafood shop) and, knowing a good water tap, filled up our 85 litre water bladder which we installed behind the rear seat. As the story seems to go, the Australian company who could make them got a big contract with the Saudi army who were all getting around the desert in the trusty hilux but need a good source of water (presumably the ute space was taken up with an anti-aircraft machine gun….). Once the Australian outback travellers in hiluxes found out about this there was quickly demand for the same Saudi design in Aussie hiluxes. In the model we are driving (2010) the rear seat doesn’t fold down (design fault Toyota….hello…) and a substantial area of valuable space is lost. We found however, that this design is easily installed by removing the rear seat, hanging the plastic bladder in (we put a ‘hammock’ of marine carpet in to prevent any rubbing) and re-installing the seat. A large filler pipe, smaller breather pipe and small outlet pipe with a tap makes it all simple, workable and basically a great idea. We bought a 10 metre food-grade hose to use for easy filling from taps.

Anyway, with 85 litres of water in the bladder plus all the jerry cans filled (another 90 litres) plus a full tank of fuel (153 litres!!) filled the day before….we were pretty much at our full travelling weight.