Brampton Island – An eerie ghost town in paradise.

17-20 October 2015

The next stop on our way North was to be Brampton Island, a place that generated very different memories for the two of us. Rob spent a considerable amount of time on the island in his days as a floor coverings contractor working on the resort’s major redevelopment 28 years ago and has always spoken of it as one of the great Barrier Reef’s most beautiful places. Karen on the other hand has a very different reason for Brampton Island to be etched in her memory.

Looking across to Pelican Island from Brampton at low tide.

It was here as a nine year old child that her family took to a life raft and abandoned ship when her parent’s game fishing boat, Wahoo, was trapped anchored on a lee shore with broken steering and a cyclone bearing down on them. After three days, the increasing ferocity of the approaching tropical storm made the risk of staying aboard with two small children too great. The life raft was safely blown onto the beach and after a trek over the island’s mountainous interior they were able to shelter at the resort until the cyclone passed. When conditions eased, Wahoo was found still riding on the three anchors her father had set before making the difficult decision to leave her.

This area of Brampton Island held strong memories for Karen.

Our sail from Keswick and St Bees across to Brampton was far less dramatic. The wind was almost directly astern again with a good size swell rolling under us. As we passed the bay where Karen's experience had occurred it stirred many memories.

The South East swell splashes on Brampton's shores.

We rounded the western end of the island and anchored in the bay near the now mothballed resort. It provides excellent protection from South Easterly winds and was to be our home for the next four days.

Keswick/St Bees to Brampton Island - 18.3 Nautical Miles - 4 Hours 0 Minutes
Average Speed 4.6 knots - High Speed 7.7 knots

The anchorage at Brampton provides good protection from the South East trade winds.

Calm water despite 20+ knots of South Easterly wind blowing.

We were now just a day sail away from the Whitsunday Islands.

Brampton Islands super clear water and golden beaches were just as we remembered them.

Most of Brampton Island is National Park with the 220 bed resort and its airstrip occupying a relatively small area adjoining the shallow passage between it and Carlisle Island. It was bought by United Petroleum in 2010 and closed the following year. Since then there has been much talk about an all new, seven star resort being built in its place but not a thing has actually been done. What was once a jewel in the string of Great Barrier Reef Island resorts now resembles the set of some sort of horror movie.

Brampton's neglected accommodation blocks are still fully furnished.

Karen made the comment that it looks like some alien force descended one day and abducted all the occupants leaving the place an instant ghost town totally devoid of all human life. Accommodation blocks sit fully furnished complete with paintings hanging on the walls. Jet skis sit on their trailers under an awning, Hobbie Cats rest on the sand outside the water sports centre,  outdoor pool tables near reception are ready for a game of eight ball while the stage in the bar silently waits for the long gone musicians to strike up their instruments.

Lonely boats with no one to sail them.

Jet skis ready to rock

Sun umbrellas, and beach badminton racquets ready for non-existent holiday makers at the water-sports desk.

Tennis rackets lay on the courts with strings rotting in the tropical sun and the once lush gardens are being reclaimed by nature, now overgrown and covered with fallen palm fronds. The only sign of life on the all par three golf course was a kangaroo bounding down what once a fairway. Rob was extremely sad to see what he remembered as such a vibrant, beautiful resort reduced to this.

Anyone for tennis?



Right down the centre of the fairway.

During our stay at the island, we swam, wandered the golden sand beaches, eat some fantastic food as always and socialised with other cruisers in the anchorage. Karen was thrilled to find Kerri, on the catamaran Quiet Achiever ,was a fellow artist and the two spent time on the beach sketching together.

Karen beach combing.

Karen used a huge cuttlefish skeleton she found as the centre piece for a still life sketch.

You can see a lot more of Karen's art on her Facebook page Karen Oberg Artist

Karen's other creative outlet on Our Dreamtime is coming up with amazing new dishes such as these stuffed squid tubes.

Her sundowner snacks are always popular in the anchorage

Mackerel steak and Karen's hand made salsa

Caprice Salad - Many of Karen's recipes can be found at the Our Galley page of our blog

Rob got a little adventurous and tackled the climb to the top of the island. The various walks through the national park areas of the island are well maintained and take you through a nice range of native vegetation.

The tree canopy is well populated with birds while goannas and kangaroos seem plentiful. Butterflies float in the air all over the island and are found in their hundreds in groves of trees along the trail.

This goanna was well camouflaged in the dry undergrowth.

One of the locals checking out the visitor

Three of these were sighted but all scooted too fast to get a photo.

From the anchorage, the walk to the two lookouts near the summit is almost a ten kilometre round trip and reasonably steep in places. The views from the top make all the effort worthwhile however.

 

Ten kilometres up to the top and back called for a nice refreshing dip to cool off.

Note the butterflies photo bombing this shot.

Our time at Brampton Island passed very quickly. It really is such a nice place it would have been very easy to spend quite a few more days there but the call of the North was still strong.  It was time to keep moving on but we do hope to stop in again on our return trip South.

Two sunset shots for this blog seeing there was none for the last one.

Good night from Brampton Island.

UPDATE - November 2017

Brampton Island Resort has been put back on the market after being closed since it was last bought by United Petroleum for 5.9 Million Dollars (Aud) in 2011. Let's hope something nice is now done there.

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Running the big ship gauntlet to St Bees & Keswick Islands

16 October 2015

After a very good night’s sleep at Curlew Island we were up and away early for our 48 nautical mile hop further North to an anchorage between Keswick and St Bees Island. The wind was again around 20 knots from the South East so we were running down wind with poled out headsail yet again. A fair sized swell was rolling under our hull which saw us surfing down the face of some of the larger ones.

Our course took us through the bulk carrier anchorage off the Hay Point coal loading terminal which provided some minor fun and games. We would be heading for a path between anchored ships only to have one of them get underway to take on their load of coal for transporting to energy hungry countries such as China, Japan or India. We managed to thread our way through safely and were just beginning to relax when we hooked a good sized fish.

Ships on the horizon, a large swell about to sweep under the stern of the boat and a very happy Karen with her catch.

It was Karen’s turn to land the nice spotted mackerel which she efficiently beheaded, bled, gutted, steaked, bagged and stowed in the freezer in minutes. A sterling performance considering how bouncy it was out on the stern in the lumpy sea state. After doing such a fine job Rob considered it unfair for her to have to prepare lunch so whipped up his specialty tailor made for when things are bumpy in the galley.

Not quite up to Our Dreamtime's usual culinary levels but a cup of hot noodles was the perfect lunch in the bumpy sea.

As we drew level with the port of Mackay our AIS (Automatic Identification System) warned us of a ship heading our way. As we veered around rolling with the swells, it indicated that if it and we maintained our current course and speeds our CPA (Closest Point of Approach) would see us pass in front of the ship by somewhere between one nautical mile and zero. We consider anything under a mile as too close for comfort and zero is a collision course which would really spoil our day.

From here one nautical mile away this ship traveling at 10.6 knots could potentially run us down in less than five minutes. Many ships travel much faster further reducing the timeframe.

 

Our AIS display provides all the data needed to make informed decisions to avoid potential disasters including the name and call sign of the other vessel so we can call them on radio and verify each others intentions. 

In this situation we would normally slow the boat down and alter course to pass behind the ship but sailing downwind with poled out headsail it’s easier said than done. We elected to start the engine to speed the boat up a bit so we could cross in front earlier but we also took some insurance. A great beauty of AIS is that it identifies the approaching ship by name so we called up Thrasher on the radio and were able to make sure they were aware of us ahead. We advised them of our plans and they kindly said they would alter course to starboard to provide a greater margin of safety.  You have to love the combination of technology and a considerate ship’s master.

Thrasher punching into the swell and passing safely astern of us after we sped up and it altered course to starboard.

We were able to sail right into the channel between Keswick and St Bees Island before furling away the headsail, main and dropping the mizzen. Picking a spot to anchor where we would be clear of the fringing reefs and not have our mast shortened by light aircraft landing on Keswick’s strip was the next challenge. The current through the channel runs quite strongly so you can expect to change direction by 180 degrees as the tide changes so you need to allow plenty of swing room which can be easier said than done in the depths you need to anchor in to avoid the coral.

Curlew Island to St Bees/Keswick Islands - 48.3 Nautical Miles - 7 Hours 49 Minutes
Average Speed 6.0 knots - High Speed 8.0 knots

 

At anchor in the passage between Keswick and St Bees Islands.

We anchored just out of the approach to the airstrip and were over flown a few of times.

 

We baked some of the day’s catch in the barbecue for dinner that night which provided a great full stop on an interesting day's sailing.

The BBQ baked mackerel was very nice after our slightly more basic lunch on passage.
You can find many of Karen's recipes in the Our Galley page of our blog.

Our progress North since leaving Rosslyn Bay Marina.

Sorry! No sunset photo this time as the high hills of Keswick Island blocked our view. Good night.

 

To stay right up to date with what we’re up to  and see lots more photos check out and 'like' our Dreamtime Sail Facebook page at Dreamtime Sail on Facebook

  

If you have only recently discovered our blog and would like to read how it all started, or work through our previous adventures, click the link to go back to our first blog entry. Stuff it. Let's just go sailing anyway.  We hope you enjoy reading the previous posts to catch up on our story.