Gypsy Cruising

10 July

Scawfell Island to Brampton Island

The rest of the Club's cruising fleet (those four boats having made it here so far) left Mackay for Brampton Island yesterday, and are now one day ahead of us. We now plan on heading to Brampton Island, interested in looking around the old resort that closed in 2011. It's a 38 mile trip which we cover by mid afternoon.

Perfect blue sky continues to elude us, but it's starting to change for the good. The downwind sail gives Anne and David their first good sail. Strangely, the few days I spent in port, and visiting Sydney, seem to have taken me out of the cruising “groove”. I’m only now starting to feel like I’m back in the swing of things. Perhaps the temporary loss of perfect weather contributed to this.

Carlisle Is with its neighbour, Brampton Is, right behind
One of the patches of blue sky starting to make an appearance

Brampton turns out to be another pretty little island. There’s only one other boat here, anchored a couple of bays further away from the resort than us. There used to be a jetty here for ferrying resort guests, and a small railway line to transport goods and equipment the kilometre or so from the jetty to the resort. The jetty is gone and the railway track has been undermined and twisted, presumably from one or more of the cyclones that have passed through the area. There’s also the remains of a dirt road from the jetty to the resort. That’s now completely overgrown but at least provides a route for us to follow. There was some type of caretaker on site so we didn’t intrude very far, but the photos are pretty clear.

Vehicles don't use this road anymore, but it's not too bad for foot traffic

Part of the ruined old rail track, presumably still used until a few years ago

Brampton's location was pretty and low key

In much the same way as we found at Great Keppel several weeks ago, the Brampton resort is in varying states of decay. It was never big but provided good times and wonderful memories to many people.