Cardwell is a small coastal town in north Queensland. I was lucky enough to vist for a week.
To say the sea food is abundant up there is a gross understatement. What I would have considered a prize fish they used for bait.
One of the delicacies of the tropics is mud crab. These buggers are huge, fierce, and bloody scarey. As you can see from the above picture don't get your hand in the way, you'll lose it. The flavor is some what breath takeing, abit like lobster, but more earthy and not as sweet, with a firmer texture.
To catch mud crab you need to travel into the estuarys and the mangroves. Man was never made to visit a mangrove swamp. Sand flys live in mangrove swamps, these fuckers will eat you alive. They bite like mosquitos but swarm in the billions. Next are the larger preditors, by wich I mean salt water crocodiles.
One of these huge fuckers was just inside the forrest while we were fishing. You could hear him smashing and bashing this way and that. What scared the shit out of me was not how close he was but the way he would flatten whole trees that were in the way. I mean, how big do you have to be before it's easyer to knock down a tree rather than walk around it?
If you make it past the crocs, you'll never beat the mud. A very fine silt, it just sucks you in, down and down. Dark grey and brown, full of life because it will take any that strays into it...
After you've survived all that it's the trees themselves that are out to get you. They lift there roots above the mud. The tangled maze is nothing short of inpassable.
Soooo...
After you've been killed like 4 times over. It's time for a bit o crab-a-rama! This involves takeing a small 'Tinnie' (aluminium boat with out board motor) along the edges of the mangroves and throwing in crab pots right up against the tree roots. These are a raised disk shapes covered in nylon mesh with openings that make it easy for a crab to get into but not out of. To attract the crabs pigs heads and catfish (also dead) were tied to the bottom of the pot with wire. The traps were left over night.
The next morning we went back and retreved the pots. In them were some truely massive mud crabs. But also other marine life, estury cod, swimmer crabs, even octopuss.. The mud crabs, (only males), cod, and octopuss were all emptyed into an intulated box in the center of the boat to await transport back to the main vessle.
On return to the main fishing boat the crabs were cleaned and cooked in boiling water. The cod were all fillited, and the octopuss was frozen.
Bust out the ball peen (hammer) to crack the shell coz it's like tank armor. But once the meat is out, (there is a shit load). Do as the locals do. Pile the meat onto white bread, splash with vinager, crack with peper, slap on another peice of bread to make a sandwich and bung it in ya gob. Chow down and go to heaven.
