Richmond couple Nora Flight and Bevan Walker took their foldable double kayak with them when they headed to northwest Australia where they camped on beaches, drifted over turtles and floated by shark nurseries.
Their recent adventure took them to the Dampier Archipelago, a cluster of 42 islands, and then the world-heritage site of Shark Bay. During the two-week trip they never saw another kayaker – apart from their friend in a single kayak. Around the Dampier Archipelago are major shipping lanes for iron ore though, so they did have to keep that in mind.
They have owned their Feathercraft folding kayak for 31 years and it has been on many trips with them in New Zealand and overseas, including with their two children when they were still at school. This trip was chosen for its isolation and wildlife, mixing sandy beaches with crystal-clear water beneath mangroves and rocky islands featuring Aboriginal rock art.
Paddling around islands, they watched pelicans steal fish from surfacing shags, harmless blacktip reef sharks swimming beneath them and turtles passing gracefully by. Nora says their only worry was the possibility of a crocodile.
“The crocs are moving down to the Dampier islands and we knew there was a male croc that had been seen, so we kept out of the water. A local told us it was a placid croc, though, that kept to itself!”
Nora says they always allow a couple of days before a kayak trip to talk to locals and learn about the best places to go and anything to watch out for. The best part about the trip was the wilderness areas and the surprise wildlife experiences.
“There was one day when we could see these little sandspits and the water was frothing with little shark fins. They were shark nurseries with all these baby sharks about a metre in length.”
The couple are now in their 60s and 70s, so Nora says they took little deck chairs to sit on beaches which added to the already substantial amount of gear they had to stash into the kayak. She says the kayak sits low in the water without gear and during the Dampier Archipelago leg of their trip they carried water for eight days because there was no water on the islands.
Being foldable, Nora says the kayak is a little harder to paddle because there is more friction and most days they averaged 18 to 20kms, while at Shark Bay they paddled 112km in four days. The other difference with a foldable kayak is they are not the best to haul up the beach at low tide.
“You have to anchor them during the day because if you try and drag them up on to the beach, they bend.”
Shallow water around many of islands meant they sometimes had to wait offshore for the tide to rise before paddling into a beach. But it was in the shallows that they could watch the blacktip sharks and turtles flitting through the water.
The couple had decades of kayaking experience before heading off into wilderness areas such as their latest trip. Bevan has even kayaked around the South Island in the past over several trips, mostly by himself, including a stretch between Jackson Bay and Mapua in two weeks. During that trip he kayaked 85km in 14 hours between the Okarito Lagoon and Hokitika. On another trip he kayaked with a friend from Dunedin to Kaikoura in three weeks during August and paddled through falling snow.
Their next kayak trip is with friends to Stewart Island in February, though Bevan also heads off on solo kayak trips periodically.
