Crossing the Creek

Wild Cattle Island is one of the magic reasons to live in Tannum. It is a short hop across Wild Cattle Creek, then you have miles of empty beach ahead of you. On a busy weekend a few people will cross the creek and venture small way down the island, but few go past the first point, about 4km away.

There is a small community of holiday houses at Bangalee at the other end of the island where there is a channel into Coliseum Harbor, so you occasionally run into a 4WD vehicle travelling along the beach, but otherwise you never see anyone.

Wild Cattle Creek is tidal, so you can only cross at certain times. You usually have two or three hours on either side of low tide when you can safely cross. So you have to do a bit of planning to make sure your visit is safe. You never want to cross on the outgoing tide: a visitor was drowned last year after being swept out to sea. I'd been for a walk on the island that day and as I was crossing back, I noticed a news cameraman filming me. I talked to him and he told me what had happened, the incident had happened several hours before and he'd just got there, delayed because of the other major local news of the day, the police catching a murderer.

(That was a story in itself, a girl had turned up dead and dumped just outside town a few months before. We rarely have murders here (except for the occasional domestic violence) and this was an unusual case especially since there were no breakthroughs for many weeks. There are a lot of transient workers at the refineries and the police assumed the culprit had left town. But persistent detective work (and matching DNA samples) finally caught the culprit, who turned out to work at one of the local refineries.)

So that evening, I'm on the news, crossing Wild Cattle Creek as background to the story on the drowning. But I digress, the creek crossing can be done safely on an incoming tide if you choose the right place to enter the water. The current will carry you up the river and you can swim a short distance and end up on the main beach. I've done it on several occasions, even once holding a camera over my head and paddling on my back.

There are occasions when you wouldn't even cross on an incoming tide: we had king tides last weekend, and huge volumes of water were coming through the mouth and up the creek, it was a maelstrom of churning sea, and at least 200m across. Most of the time, the crossing is just fifty meters or so, and you can wade ''most'' of the way, though this should only be tried if you are a good swimmer.

So once you are across the creek you have 10km of deserted beach ahead of you, and a day (depending on tides) to explore it