Osborne Islands - Caves, art and arches

 We arrived at the Osborne Island anchorage late Thursday after taking a detour around the large Pearl farm in the bay.  You can see our track change direction as we enter the bay to stay outside of the Pearl farm lease.  The next morning Paul and I set out in the dinghy to explore some of the many attractions in the area.  We set out at the start of the rising tide because several sites were up creeks which are dry at low tide.

Our first sto- was the apartments, a natural rock formation which had columns holding up a large roof rock forming many interconnected caves.  There were at least a couple dozen seperate rooms all connected by passages.  The aboriginals must have been very excited when they discovered such a great shelter.  There was one little area of aboriginal art by an entrance overhang.  

The Apartments from the outside

An entranceway 

A large interior room

Some aboriginal art work

We next went a bit further up the creek to another aboriginal art site where a large group of fish were depicted.

I think they are fish, some say they are birds or even penguins 

The final site for the creek was right at the headwater where we continued up the freshwater creek to a series of large billabongs.  There was supposed to be a waterfall but it was dry.  There were lots of birds and we had been warned there could be crocodiles in the billabongs so we did not go into the water.

The first billabong - note the two very large unidentified stork / heron like birds taking off

The second billabong with a very large and loud flock of cockatoos flying overhead

Some of the cockatoo flock in a gum tree

Our next stop was another rock art site about a mile away by dinghy.  It contained a painting of a 7 metre snake which was painted on the face of and under a ledge.  I was not able to get a good picture of it.

We continued on to view a site with several natural arches.  We could drive the dinghy right into the first arch.


One of the natural rock arches

Holding up the roof

We had two final stops.  The next was the site of a World War II coast watch camp where all that was left was hundreds of carbon rods and electrolyte from the batteries that powered their radios.  The final stop was another cave which was supposed to have rock art but we did not find it.

After returning to True North we finished up the afternoon by motoring up to the top of the bay and reanchoring to cut off a few miles from our next passage to Butcher Bay.

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