White baiting
Me, dad and Finnian went white baiting near Ross with Mark, Mia, William, Tony, Akalya and Sarah. We go white baiting every year. We were gone for three days. No Mums were allowed. I was excited to get to the beach. It was a warm day. When we arrived we went to the barn. There were cows, roosters and chickens everywhere. We were sleeping in the barn! We uasilly sleep in a tent but this year we wanted to do something different. One of the doors didn’t shut. There was poo and blood on the floor. The barn smelled like poo and sheep. We dropped off our stuff and went to the beach.
I was glad to get away from the smell. To get to the beach we had to drive through some sheep paddocks. We parked the car and waited for the others to arrive. Soon Mark and William had arrived. Mia and her Mum were going for a ride before Mia’s Mum had to leave. We all jumped down onto the sand. We made a fire pit but didn’t light it. We did it while the dads tried to get some whitebait. The dads didn’t have any luck. So we were going to try across the other side of the river.
We got the kayaks and nets to cross the river. We had Finnians and my kayak. Me and Dad went across first. I paddled across to the other side. I grabbed my gumboots, Dads backpack and his gumboots. Dad attached my kayak to the one that he was on and paddled back over. To get someone else. I was left there on my own. Dad took so long I thought they had forgotten about me. The reason they took a while was because Tony, Sarah and Akalya had arrived. Finally Finnian and Dad came. There were more kayaks now because Tony and his kids had some. Next came Willam and his friend Leth. Lastly the parents came over.
We made a fire pit and then Tony used the lighter to get it started. The dads took turns whitebaiting.The first and second whitebait was caught by Mark. We named them Pitrisha and Bob but Leth burnt patrisha. The highest score of whitebait in one scoop was 32. That was from my dad. Me and aklyka washed the whitebait before putting them in the bucket so the bucket didn’t have lots and lots of weed and stone. We also liked counting how many whitebait were in the net. After a while we got bored of doing that so we went off to find somthing else to do.
Me and Akalyka played mud monsters in the water. Finnian kept throwing mud balls at us. The water only came up to our ankles. Soon Mia finished her ride and came over. She went to play with Sarah and William. They were making a hut. We went over to them. We found a place that we liked because the sand crumbled beneath our feet until it was just normal sand. Soon it was time to go back across the river.
We paddled across and went back to the barn. The dads got ready to go back to the beach while we played. Next we were back at the beach. Dad got a fire started and cooked some potatoes and sausages. When we had eaten we found marshmallow sticks. We roasted the marshmallows but it took a while because the marshmallows were ginormous. It got dark quickly.
We ran away from the parents. We were almost in total darkness. I stubbed my toe a few times because I could not see where I was going. As we ran down the beach we found good hiding spots. Me and akalyka got bored of hiding so we spied on the parents. My dad jumped out at us. I jumped really high because it got a fright. The dads called for us to come to the cars. We brushed our teeth and jumped into bed. It took me a while to get to sleep because I was so excited. It rained a bit in the night but I was warm because I had my sleeping bag and a blanket. I was happy but tired afterward.
