Day 31: Yardie Creek

We met up with Nadine, Tenzin, Annie & the rest of the support crew in the morning and decided to spend the day exploring the area. The geography in the last little bit of our paddle had changed significantly and just inside the coastal land was a huge, tough, harsh ridgeline. Yardie Creek arrives at the sea from its journey through substantial red rock gorge country. The terrain, from a distance, appears to be no different from the harsh desert inland. You would imagine the heat to be unforgiving. The wind also. The red ochre country is perfectly dotted with a pale green bushes, trees and covering. Paddling up the creek and into the gorge we all agreed was truly impressive. I was surprised how close to the coast the gorge actually was. No more than a couple hundred metres down the creek, rock walls on both sides commence their rise and before long you feel like a little spec slowly being consumed by an awesome valley. It felt like something out of the rugged Kimberley. We were escorted up and down the gorge by cheery cockatoos before setting up camp and preparing for the 800km journey to Port Hedland the following day.

Day 30: Ningaloo Reef

We’ve just had 2 days of breathtaking, picturesque paddling sandwiched between Ningaloo Reef and the WA coast. I can’t really articulate the sights our eyes have seen but its been a treat to say the least. Countless turtles and pods of dolphins swimming around our kayaks, moving in and out of the water, doing their thing and totally unfazed by our presence. Stunning colours of the water moving between a rich deep blue to a turquoise light green, and as we moved up the coast we were continually rewarded with postcard sights of the reef, fish darting below our paddles and the fine white sands to our right. BLISS.

We’ve also received much welcomed sponsorship/product support from Roman (http://www.roman.com.au/) – manufacturers of top quality outdoor equipment. They have just sent us a couple of bivvy bags (which is like a compactable swag) and sleeping mats. The bivvy bags (photo) have been a big success…compact, quick to assemble, effective, and most importantly, looks good! Considering we know very little of bivvy bags (I’d never heard of them before), they have had an immediate impact…after 1st nights sleep, Dave: “I think I’m falling in love with the BIV!’

They were long days of paddling but with such incredible surrounds any pain was numbed. Fortunately the light southerly winds pushed the seas in our direction and moved us a long at a good pace. After 120km our journey finished on a timely deep orange sunset which fell into the ocean just as we arrived in Yardie Creek.

Day 29: EXCISION ZONE: Latitude 23 degrees south

We camped at the 23 degrees south latitude and were treated to a big wide sun setting into the ocean last night. Whilst I slept right on the beach to the sounds of lapping water, Dave spent the night up on a dune as he was expecting an early morning call for an interview with 3CR (Melbourne)… and it was… 4 in the morn our time!!

I woke up to the sight where, to my left (south), anybody arriving on an Australian island by boat seeking protection could lodge a valid visa application in Australia, thus having access to the onshore processing system (and its various safeguards). However if a boat was to land on an island to my right (north), the asylum seeker on board would not have access to the above system and supports and can be forcibly removed to places such as Nauru & Papua New Guinea – being processed through the offshore system.

Being here, looking to my left and right, it feels absurd that legislation like this can exist… purely to prevent asylum seekers coming to Australia. Most of these islands are considered to be Australia for every other aspect…Australian’s have lived there ever since the country has existed, we are happy to extract natural resources to benefit economically, etc etc but for this above reason it seems like it is not considered to be truly Australian?? I find it bizarre that this exists…that it can be allowed to happen…that parts of Australia can be removed from the country to suit a particular purpose. It’s like we want to play both sides of the fence…and in the middle vulnerable people are unfairly trapped, damaged and broken…and I wonder, how do we feel about being responsible for such human suffering??

Days 28: Coral Bay (Ningaloo Reef)

Our 120km paddle along the North West Cape commenced at Coral Bay, which on arrival, appeared to be the snorkelling Mecca of the west. This so called ‘tiny, chilled out’ place was absolutely bumpin’ with tourists, 4wd’s, caravans and their share of grey nomads. Parking on the beach we packed our kayaks with sufficient supplies for a few days as well as all the necessities that real kayakers require…fishing lines, snorkels/fins, spear gun, and BIG JOHN.

The purpose for kayaking this stretch was to enter the EXCISED waters off the mainland. The excised/unexcised boarder is at 23 degrees south latitude which is not far north of Coral Bay. Farewelling the support crew after a quick lunch (Dave’s family & a small group of friends who’ve joined for this leg to Darwin), we paddled off into the glare of the hot WA sun. Happily leaving behind the tour boats and the Coral Bay masses, we paddled around Maud’s Landing and soon found our space in a paradise. The afternoon paddle of about 20km finds us at 23 degrees south… a place of great significance to those arriving by boat seeking protection, and as the sun sets today a place of extraordinary beauty. It couldn’t feel more contrasting. And much like the issue of EXCISION, which is unknown by most Australians, this place feels relatively untouchable/inaccessible by most. With its beauty, it doesn’t really feel like this is, or could, or should, be that place of such significance.

Days 25 – 27: Perth – Coral Bay

It was difficult to leave the hospitality of Linda and Hossein. We had a lovely time hanging and chatting with you both. Thanks for letting the EXCISED entourage invade your lives, your floors and your washing machine for a few days and nights!

We’re running a tight ship…well trying to, especially when it comes to our itinerary. About 1400kms to be travelled over 2 days plus a little sight seeing! As can imagined they were long days & nights…and it was at the end of night one, after visiting the remarkable pinnacles and journeying on to Monkey Mia (adding an additional 300km to the trip to play with the famous dolphins – as documented in the definitive travel book ‘Are we there yet?’), that we got bogged in an off road sand dune at 2:30 in the morning…it was a little hard to see where we were going! Leaving the problem til morning light we found ourselves digging our way out for a few hours and missing the dolphin show. We cut our losses, not visiting MM, and got back on the road to drive straight through to Coral Bay with the highlight being the stunning native flora lining the road.

Day 24: Fremantle – Project SafeCom gig

‘Big ups’ to Jack Smit from Project SafeCom for organising an EXCISED function at Kulcha in Freo. Thanks Jack. You can check out Project SafeCom’s website which is jam packed full of interesting stuff on www.safecom.org.au. It was fantastic to hear some great music, too. Thanks to Blac Blocs and Airport City Shuffle (www.myspace.com/airportcityshuffle)for donating their time and creativity to the EXCISED project. Another highlight of the gig was Allan Boyd’s performance of a poem he had written about excision. Here it is:

under the stark imperfect structures, the halogen glare, we gather to kill the states of industrial gauge dispossession. the black sky a rigid scar of Christmas, a fence in the barbed wire sea.

here brother you have the right to perpetual desertion, disparity, dysfunction for certain, you and yr family in the wet salt face, the constant rumble of a diesel toxicity - the fossil peak drowning in a bat shit mountain, a shattered dreaming, a tattered cloth, a photograph of sisters lost. and the roll roll roll as the nights heave closer to the excised zone - yr neck deep in jargon, a slight of the razor hand, and they slash n slice into race, they turn people into gates. our messages lost in the hegemonic trail of glass and fire. a tragedy in one foul act an outright victory a cousin on ice, on fire on fire on fire - and this week the riot is funded by the government the nearest broken computer, a missing key on a calculator - and I'll see you later, he said, his face crooked with rage. and the batons in yr back as you approach the doors, the pack thinning to trickles, the horses high and hostile. and they spilled over the metal in droves, scaling the bloody walls, the children tossed to running doctors and lawyers and mothers and brothers and sisters and fathers. and the setting desert sun, the thin orange dust in yr teeth. the star maps of this journey, this paddling farce, to reach an open door, a concrete crack.

and in the bitter forests of 5000 islands we sing as the ripple of oar to ocean tears a new path, the rainbows chased us to the ridges, to the fences the fences.


Allan also designed the flyer for the gig and we thought it was too funky not to show you all.

Day 16 - 22: Christmas Island

It feels like we are on a strange, macabre odyssey. We have just returned from Christmas Island and, as well as meeting some fantastic people - thanks Robyn, Lyn, Margaret and Charlene - we visited some of what I think are and will become sacred sites for Australians. This is a frontline of Australia’s response to asylum seekers and refugees. Before the excision laws of 2001, thousands of asylum seekers passed through Christmas Island before being brought to the mainland where they were detained until they were granted protection or removed from the country.

It was here that the Tampa came and sought to offload the asylum seekers it had rescued at Australia’s request. It was off these shores that the children were not thrown overboard and that the SIEV X sunk.

The waters here are remarkable. They are a deep blue; they seem to absorb the light from the sun, and reflect it back, becoming luminous. We paddled and snorkeled in excised waters; waters that asylum seekers and refugees who have sought protection in Australia have sailed in, swum in, and in some instances, died in. (The photo here is us paddling in Flying Fish Cove.) We heard the stories of the asylum seekers who had passed through here and of the ways in which the local community has supported them. We saw the new, multi-million dollar, high security detention centre that is being built here. The government, having commissioned the new facility clearly endorses it. The Australian Labor Party has said that it will scrap the Pacific Solution, but will maintain excision. It will process asylum seekers caught in the excised zone on Christmas Island. This is a place of extraordinary beauty, great people, but which is being used by our political leaders as a place in which the nation’s dirty work can be done out of sight.

D.