John Brewer and Orpheus Island

We set sail to John Brewer Reef from Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island, at about 0700. We had David and Al on board, and the boat well stocked with all our food and beverages for the next 10 days. Mischief kept us company on the calm 30NM sail out to the reef. Along the way, we hooked up three mackerel tuna. Lots of fun to catch, and big, but not so much fun to eat, so they were given a kiss and released.

Looking at a navigation app, John Brewer Reef is shaped a bit like an ear, or a capital G. It would have been nice to make our way into the spiral, but the lagoon is full of bommies and must be navigated with the utmost care. There are two public moorings out there, but both were taken, so we had little choice but to anchor about halfway along the northern edge of the reef in 24 metres of water. Fortunately, that depth doesn’t worry us too much as we have our trusty Rocna anchor. A couple of other Rally boats were out there, including Goolara, Dignity and Walden.

David, Graeme and I headed out for a snorkel that afternoon, while Alison generously offered to stay back and hang with Jamie.

We chose a broad, round bommie and jumped in. Straight away, we were thrilled by the beauty and colour. The photos and videos are unlikely to do it justice, but here goes…

The coral out there was some of the best we’ve seen the whole trip, with plate after plate of overlapping table coral in the pastel colours of an ice-cream shop; strawberry, peach, lemon, apricot, lime, caramel and vanilla.

Table corals certainly dominate, but they were interspersed with other hard corals such as staghorns, finger, lobed, bolder brain, cauliflower, and tiered coral. There were also soft corals, such as tree corals and a coral that looks like dense clusters of tiny flowers.

Amongst it all, we could find burrowing (giant) clams, clown fish (cinnamon anemone), butterfly fish, blue-green chromis (those little fish that thread themselves through the coral fingers) bannerfish and many others. (Oh yes, and unfortunately the dreaded crown-of-thorns starfish. Not many, thankfully.) At times, it felt like we were swimming in a giant aquarium, with fish all around us and the aqua blue water beyond.

The first night out at John Brewer we started to bounce and roll a bit, although the wind was from the SE and the anchorage Is protected SE-SW. It’s always a little strange, maybe even unnerving, out at the reef with no land in sight, especially once the sun sets. Around 2300, the boat began to jerk quite badly, which led us to discover the anchor chain was caught under rock and going straight down from the bow, putting a lot of strain on the chain and the bow roller as there was no give. Graeme already had a fair bit of chain out, and he let out quite a bit more to resolve the situation. We were wondering what was going to happen when we tried to get the anchor up later on…

The next morning, we were back in the water in our snorkel gear to show Jamie and Al and Andrew and Lynne the amazing underwater gardens.

Museum of Underwater Art – John Brewer Installation

The following day, Graeme, David and I dinghied to the northern end of John Brewer and dived the MOUA installation, called The Coral Greenhouse. The Museum of Underwater Art is, according to its website, ‘a series of globally significant artworks located on the Great Barrier Reef [near] Townsville’. A talented fellow by the name of Jason de Caires Taylor has created the installations (of which only two have been completed so far), that are not just novelties or art for art’s sake, but rather, ‘share a message of reef conservation and restoration’.

Set up like a plant greenhouse, The Coral Greenhouse has sculptures of people pottering about and tending to coral ‘seedlings’. It’s best to see by scuba, but David snorkelled above and with the visibility very good, he could see a lot from the surface.

Anyway, Graeme and I loved it. It had an atmosphere I can’t describe. Perhaps the video will help…

It was rough and rolly out at John Brewer that night, after the wind changed, going NE, N and NW, with waves roaring outside and breaking against the side of the boat. It was probably one of the roughest, scariest-sounding nights we’ve ever experienced. I don’t think anyone got much sleep and I think Dave and Al were wondering what they’d got themselves into! But we all survived, and the anchor came up OK the next day.

We left at about 0700 in company with Mischief, and had a very quick sail over to Orpheus Island, a journey of some 38 miles heading west back towards the mainland, with winds ranging from 4-23 knots during the morning. We trolled a line again, and while we didn’t catch anything we thought was edible, David had a great time landing a shark. Well, he didn’t actually land it – no one wanted it thrashing around on the boat! The guys managed to get it to spit out the lure and it lived to fight another day.

Above: David reeling in his catch. Below: Blacktip Reef Shark Photos by Alison Baxter.

Orpheus is part of the Palm Island Group, which is made up of Great Palm Island, Orpheus, Fantome, Pelorus, Havannah, Curacoa and a cluster of islets in the South-west. Orpheus has a couple of lovely bays on its western side, and we went into the very pretty and sheltered Little Pioneer Bay.

We spent a couple of days at Orpheus. A research station belonging to James Cook University sits in the southern part of Pioneer Bay. Back in the 1980s, a project was undertaken to farm giant clams. It was so successful that giant clams were relocated all over the place, including Magnetic Island and some of the inner reefs. There is still a clam garden in the bay, with dozens of the giant clams now decades old. We snorkelled over them when the tide was in, and went to have a look at them spurting at low tide. A snorkel in another part of the bay revealed hundreds of colourful burrowing clams amongst some surprisingly good coral. We also wandered over to the research station, where we were very fortunate to be offered a tour through the facility.

Giant clams at high and low tide, and the coral garden in Pioneer Bay

After tough days of snorkelling, we spent the evenings on the beach watching the sun go down with the guys from Mischief, Dignity, Goolara, Indigo and Tamanu. It was tough to take, but someone had to do it, right?