Got a phone call last night at around 9 pm,there had been a flare sighting by a reputable member of the public and who is involved with the trawler company here in town.He had seen it from his house on Brown's Range,for those who are not familiar with Carnarvon its the same hill the big satelite dish issituated on,some 8km from the water.When he saw the flare he got a good bearing on its location by sighting up the big red runway landing lights at the airport.
So three of us sat down there at our sea rescue building for 3 hours looking out to sea in the darkness hoping for another one to go off.On the way down to the building we had checked out the town boat ramp car park,empty,and got the police to do a check on the other one at Pelican Point,empty as well.There was one boat logged in doing an over nighter at the islands ,it wasn't him.A wet liner 8nm out and onhis way in radioed that he couldn't pick up any boats on radar.So we waited untill he got nearly into port before calling it a day.
Sure pissed the three of us off,having to come down for what was a genuine sighting that was probably set off by someone with little else to do with their time.But we have to check them out because you can never know if its going to be a real emergency.
If caught they should be hit with massive penalties like the ones a while back who did a radio distress call that resulted in a massive operation off Dampier.