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08/10/2006: "SPEARFISHING THE KEPPEL ISLANDS ....."Almost drowned""
24 August (continued) In Rocky we met Ron Zangari, he will be doing a bit of (spear) fishing with us on Sunday. Merv Cox a friend of Ron Z’s will most probably come along also.
We made our way out to Yeppoon and saw Wally Muller, skipper of Riversong. We leave for Nor’ West Island next Wednesday 4pm. We shall spear fish for a couple of days to pay for our fare.
At present there is a mob of shell collectors on the island, they have been there for four months so the story goes.
25 August Ron Zangari and Merv Cox came with us this morning. We launched the boat off the main beach at Yeppoon without any bother. There area lot of islands about 12 – 16 miles offshore. The one’s we were interested in were the Man and Wife.
We dropped the picked and jumped in the water. Visibility was about 80 feet or more – it is hard to judge but it was very clear.
Got some pictures of Ron filming a big turtle and another of Snowie with a big trevally. A whaler (shark) about six or seven foot kept appearing out of the blue so I took a shot of him.
At one time you could see some big Spanish mackerel in mid-water, and a shark swimming around the bottom and sea snakes crawling about in the coral.
We got stuck into the brown spotted cod. Snowie and I both got one’s up to about 60 pounds and about 220 pounds of cod altogether.
Ron got a cod stuck in a cave, a good 60 feet down. I was helping him dive, to try and free it. Evidently I stayed on the bottom a little too long and blacked out.
The next thing I can remember was Ron grabbing me by the arm. As it turns out, Ron said he saw me sinking feet first and still kicking so he dived down and grabbed hold of my arm.
Anyhow Ron and Snow managed to shift the cod eventually. We had a rather long slow trip home, because of all the weight.
Ron had a bit of bother with the snakes. At one time there, he was bashing the surface with a gun, trying to scare off a snake on the surface.
26 August Today we got the boat ready for a good days fishing but unfortunately we had some trouble with the motor. So we decided to take it to Rocky and have it repaired. As it turned out we had a new set of points installed for a very moderate cost of two pounds and ten shillings.
