Sailing Around Australia; Loving the Lakes

Paynesville, Gippsland Lakes, Victoria

22/3/2015 Loving the Lakes

For the past 2 weeks our sailing around Australia adventure has taken place inland. Easy Tiger has ventured into the largest inland water way in the southern hemisphere, the Gippsland lakes. Perhaps the best thing we love about the Gippsland Lakes is that there are excellent facilities for boats and, unbelievably, the facilities are provided for free.

We have found many well kept jetties, many with toilets, showers (some with hot showers) and gas barbecues available.

We have found that if we don’t fancy a jetty, there a quite a few swing moorings available for the public to use. Again, these are free of charge.

Also at most of these jetties and anchorage places there are well marked walk trails.

As I write this we are tied on to the Metung jetty. No walk trails or hot showers here, but you can forgive that as the jetty is only 50 metres from the Metung hotel. This is after a leisurely 1 hour motor up the Reeves channel from Lakes Entrance.

This morning we had friends Stephen and Sharon Bone follow us to Metung in their boat Shiraz. it turned out that we arrived and tied on to the jetty just in time, as an hour or so later, the Metung hotel was inundated with fisherman bringing in their catch for weigh-in for the Victorian Bream fishing competition.

This really frustrated Leanne. To see these guys weighing bream at over a kilo each, while every day and everywhere we have been in the lakes, Leanne has been fishing without so much as a bight.

Tomorrow we will delve even deeper into the Gippsland lakes. There is another small town called Loch Sport that is begging to be explored and once we have been there we will head north into the Tambo River.

The Gippsland Lakes appear to be a paradise for “Trailer Sailers", who are a different type of sailing fraternity. Trailer Sailers are small yachts, mostly around 20 feet (6 metres) long. As the name suggests they can fit on to a trailer and be legally towed to their next port of call.

As we pull up along side the trailer sailer’s it’s a bit like Gulliver landing in Lilliput. The folk aboard these boats are friendly enough but we do have little in common, and I am quite sure they are a bit peeved that we block out their view and in some cases their sunlight.

One place in the lakes that is worth a mention, is Raymond Island. This Island is a short (and I do mean short) ferry ride across the canal from Paynesville. Once off the ferry (the ferry takes longer to load cars on, than to travel the distance) in a short space of time, you come across the Koala trail. By following the signs and keeping a look out in the tops of the trees, you find Koala’s doing what Koala’s do. Sleeping. Most that we saw were sound asleep although one took offence to us tapping it's tree.

So onward we go with our lakes expedition. We have Richard and Family on Sapphire arriving in the lakes early this week and we are really excited to have Brian (b2) and Eva on Zofia (who we left Mandurah with, many moons ago) arriving later in the week.

That reunion will be a hoot.

By then I think we will have had enough lakes loving and will return to rigors of the ocean once more to continue our sailing adventure.