Sailing Around Australia; The Name Game

Forster/ Tuncurry to Camden Haven NSW

9/6/2015 – The Name Game

Easy Tiger’s sailing around Australia adventures will take us past Seal Rocks today.

While it may seem that in itself is not really unusual, the interesting thing is,  this will be the 6^th Seal rocks, seal island or seal something that we have sailed by.

There is a Seal Island in Western Australia. There is also Seal Island in South Australia and not to be outdone, Victoria has a Seal Island as well.

Google earth also mentions that Seal Island’s exist in Canada and South Africa but I will have to take their word for it because we won’t be passing by either of these any time soon.

While on the subject of names, we also passed by our 2^nd Sugarloaf bay on our way to Forster / Tuncurry. Strangely, it is the 2^nd Sugarloaf in New South Wales, the other being in middle Sydney Harbour.

 There is a Mount Sugarloaf near the town of Richmond and just to add a bit of sweetness, Victoria has a sugarloaf reservoir and WA has a popular surfing beach called sugarloaf rock in the south west.

Also popular, it seems, is naming islands after early explorers. This is a fine and noble gesture to those  very brave and intrepid people that discovered and mapped our country. But, why did we have to have three Flinders Islands? One in tassie, one in South Australia and one in New South Wales?

Come on now. Who ever does the name game could have been quite a bit more imaginative. Yes, it’s true that many little rocks and mini islands that we pass have seals on them, but do they all have to be called seal something?

Also, as we usually only pass by at a snails pace, staring at the rock and island formations can make one believe that they look like anything you set your mind to, so not every bulbous hill looks like bread.

Yes those that discovered and mapped our country deserve the recognition, but did they not have a middle name? Perhaps like the password on our bank accounts, could they have used their mother’s maiden name or the name of their first pet?

It’s something to think about as we are on passage from Forster to Camden Haven.  I must finish this as we are about to navigate past Seal Rocks the 3^rd. Today though I have renamed them as Davy rocks and Dinky Island.

Yet another Sugarloaf. 

The locals keep a lookout over the bar, along with the marine rescue HQ  in the background

The bridge joins Forster and Tuncurry. It also halts our progress  upstream.

Another Bar crossed in and out.

After convincing the Bossa Nova crew to buy new fishing gear, the least Leanne could do was help them rig it up.