Measuring wasn't meant to be easy

When Medium Sized Mal (Fraser - the only Big Mal around is Meninga) said "Life wasn't meant to be easy." he was probably not thinking of trying to estimate the width of the mouth of Mallacoota Inlet.  It is however not an easy task without a good range finder.

The first estimate of the width was by Michael York who offered 100 m.  His difficulty was finding someone to hold the other end of the tape measure.  

I had a crack on June 20, taking compass bearings from a couple of spots on the Western side of the Inlet to a lump of seaweed on the Eastern side and plotting all this on Google Earth.  All a little dodgy, but gave an estimate of 130 m.  I think it was close to high tide.

My first effort on 21 June was from Captain Stevenson's Point.  That was not possible as there was very difference in compass bearing to the Western and Eastern sides of the mouth.  So I had another go from the lookout at the far end of the Campground.

I took my bearing to the end of the sand spit on the left of this image and a point on the right hand side as close to directly opposite this as I could estimate.  From the image it is very clear that the tide is quite low (and that the water depth is very low for about half the width).

I plotted the position of the lookout and the two bearings on Google Earth.  The two big clumps of shrubbery inside the SSE line of this image no longer exist (well, not in that position: I think they are now somewhere near the wharf).  The Mal-ific  difficulty here is that for precision it is necessary to know how far along the lines the actual mouth is situated.  My guess is represented by the green line: this is 120 m long.  A line joining the two pins is 140 m long and it was a good bit closer to my position than that.

Trying to bring all this together I think I would say that the width of the water varies from about 120 m at low tide to 140m at high tide.  Noting the area of shoaling in the second image above I'd suggest that the usable width would be somewhat less than half that at high tide and a lot less at low tide: possibly a jet-boat would be helpful!