SUNDAY 9 AUGUST     SEISIA

Yet another hot day.

I had to get up early, because we minded Portia from 7.30am, on, until R returned mid afternoon. He’d promised us some of the fish and crays he was going to catch, in return for our dog-sitting service, but he didn’t catch anything! It was nice to have the dog, though she fretted and was listless, poor girl. I tried to give her lots of attention and reassure her that R would come back for her before too long.

After R reclaimed Portia, who was overjoyed to see him, we went to the jetty. John caught bait fish, dibbling for these like the locals do. Our NSW neighbours fished too. A young guy caught a big cobia with a baitfish John gave him. It put up quite a fight and provided some degree of entertainment for a while.

We went for a final, short, walk on the beach. One of the drawbacks to being here is that we have really only walked on the beach frontage that abuts the camp ground. When we were first here, I set out to walk along the beach to the north – it is a lovely long one. But there was a shack with some aboriginals not far from the camp boundary and they muttered and glared and gave off threatening vibes. Although I am pretty sure that the lower part of the beach sands should be public ground, I wasn’t game to keep going, where I was clearly unwelcome – rights or not!

The differences between the aboriginals and the Islanders attitudes and industry, up here, has been a most interesting discovery of this trip. Previously, I had ignorantly lumped them all together. The Islanders operate all the successful non-white businesses, and seem to be quite good at commerce. It is sad that the aborigines are still at the bottom of the heap – even on “their” Cape.