High Risk Shelling

We anchored about 200 yards off of Horn Island, the anchorage of choice near Thursday Island. This croc, or in Aussie terms, Saltie, was laying on the bank. For us whimps, even this Florida boy, it's a little daunting. Definitely no shell hunting on this beach. While the croc teeth look pretty intimidating, apparently they open their mouths to cool off -- at least that's what the Aussies tell tourists. Definitely good dentition.

Here's a gruesome old picture of a local opening the stomach of a 26 foot saltie and laying human body parts next to it. Apparently it still happens.

If the crocs weren't bad enough, this large shark is cruising the murky waters next to the dinghy dock.

 Next stop was the Australian Border Force to clear out. We took the short ferry from Horn to Thursday Island and went to visit Her Majesty's Customs House. A classic building from the colonial period. It took about 40 minutes to clear out, but we are now free to go tomorrow.

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Horne Island was a major airbase in the Second World War and the most northern one for the Royal Australian Air Force. It was also used by the US Air Force extensively. Northern Australia was attacked by the Japanese-- Horn was the second most bombed part of Australia in the war (behind Darwin). We took a great tour of the WWII sites on the island with Vanessa as our guide. Highly recommended. She and her husband, with the assist of the military and volunteers, are slowly pushing back the overgrowth and preserving the sites around the island's airfield. This gun was part of the a circle of three that protected the area.

It took a large team to rapidly fire these guns at the Japanese Zeros coming in overhead.

There are many plane wrecks around the close by islands. This is the remains of a rotary engine at the crash site of a US B-17 Fortress bomber.

A termite hill, taller than Chris, in a land full of termites. Just reminds us of how long the ABF Quarantine officer inspected Georgia on entry to Australia looking for... termites.
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We are off on tomorrow, our Saturday, around noon. We should have about a 5 day passage to Tual, in the Kai Islands, our port of entry in Indonesia. I'll try and post a note to the blog while we are enroute.

Paul