Surveying and mapping the underwater topography and water depth is the content of the initial training course for seafarers, and under the leadership of Li Sanduo, everyone will soon be able to get on the road.

The river is a small river, and the estuary area is not large, so everyone boarded the boat early in the morning and set off, and the people on the boat continued to measure the depth of the water with a plumb weight, and then recorded, and then turned back to the estuary, and then surveyed the terrain and water depth along the coastline to the east and west, and finally, they found the site where they could build a deep-water port dock near the location marked on the map.

Cao Limei is right, if there is a simple dock here, it can dock a ship of the Pride class.

However, this so-called deep-water port is only a small bay that a ship of Pride's caliber can approach, and it is clear that the Nicole will not be able to get close to it unless a pier is built that goes deeper into the water.

It took them a morning to complete all the mapping work, followed by a survey of the river and deep inland, before heading to the eastern and southern coasts of the island, where there are narrow white sand beaches.

According to the geological data of the Old World, the placer resources on the beach are the raw material guarantee for the non-ferrous metal smelting industry in the future---- at least in the early stage of construction.

An hour after lunch, Li Sanduo and Zhu Beiguo respectively served as the principal and deputy team leaders, and took 14 students to board the four lifeboats again.

Despite the hot weather, everyone was tightly wrapped, wearing thick-soled cowhide shoes on their feet, a fully enclosed motorcycle safety helmet on their heads, armed belts tied around their waists, and an AK47 on their backs, and a Colt python **** on their armed belts.

They first rowed their boats cautiously towards the mouth of the river. The estuary area had been surveyed in the morning, so the road was fairly smooth, and the river was so gentle that there was little sign of the river flowing without careful observation.

The lifeboat team followed the river two kilometres inland the island before returning. The mangrove forests on both sides of the creek are dense, and there are many seabird nests in the trees, and the occasional crocodile or two is startled by the chirping of birds and insects, and its scaly bodies shine in the sun, and then sway and stir up a cloudy splash on the bank.

However, the people on the dinghy were calm at this time, and with their experience, they had long since turned a blind eye to this phenomenon.

On this afternoon, the smooth, clean white sand beach on the east side of Bentinker Island was finally printed with the shoe prints of several rows of exploration team's big scalp boots.

As it turned out, the information provided by Nicole and Anna about the island was very accurate, this island is also an uninhabited desert island, the terrain on the island is very gentle, and if the weather is good, standing on the lookout of the Pride and holding a telescope, you can see almost the entire island at a glance.

The island's white sand beaches, shallow mangrove forests and inland savanna vegetation make this small island of less than 200 square kilometers look beautiful and, of course, desolate.

Clearly, the island's biological resources were not enough to feed a tribe that lived by gathering and hunting.

It is still nearly 30 kilometers away from the nearest mainland, so it is not worth the loss for the tribesmen to come here in canoes, and it is not as convenient as gathering and hunting on the coast of the mainland nearby.

The exploration activities on this day were very careful, and Zhu Beiguo led a team of people to collect mineral sand samples along the coast, which was something that Cao Limei repeatedly explained, and Zhu Beiguo would not slack off.

The exploration team walked more than ten kilometers from north to south along the coastline, and when the sun set in the afternoon, they finally completed all the surveys and returned to the ship.

On Thursday night, when a sudden strong wind blew on the sea, the experienced captain Gu immediately ordered the crew to pull anchor and set sail, making a detour of 50 kilometers to the west, and docked at a small island outside the southwest corner of Bentinke Island.

The decision proved to be wise, and that night, a hurricane swept across the eastern part of Bentinke Island, lighting up the night sky with distant lightning and rumbling thunder all night......

At 8 a.m. on Friday, January 26, 1657, the Pride finally reached the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the northern part of the box bay of mainland Australia.

The Panlong River, meandering and flowing calmly into the Gulf of Carpentaria, gradually turns light green at the mouth of the river, and finally becomes one with the azure of the water.

The name Panlongjiang is prominently marked on a large-scale hand-drawn topographic map, and judging by the handwriting, it was written by Cao Limei.

At present, all the topographic maps in everyone's hands are from the computer data room, which are drawn by Xia Xiaoou, Cheng Fangfang, Du Na and Yi Shanjing, and other ladies, under the guidance of Cao Limei, a surveying and mapping professional, according to the satellite map in the computer.

The picture was drawn by the girls, and it was a pregnant girl, so no one was embarrassed to complain about the quality of the drawing, and it was impossible to grab the right to name the place name on the map with them.

In particular, the naming rights of some so-called "wild blank areas" should belong to the mappers, as long as the names are not too outrageous, everyone will also recognize, in fact, it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual reward for the laborious mappers.

The name Panlong River, I heard that it was given by Xia Xiaoou, because from the map, the river course is bent and bent, very much like the posture of a dragon, so the original name of the river in the old world disappeared like this, and was replaced by the very Chinese name of Panlong River.

The Panlong River is not a small river, it is one of the two large rivers that flow north into the bottom of this box-shaped bay on the Australian mainland, because the entire coastal inland area where the river is located is a lowland plain, within a radius of tens of kilometers, its altitude difference is less than one meter, so the flow rate of the river is very slow here, and the estuary is almost zero.

It is precisely for this reason that the water that has lost its kinetic energy is often pushed by the sea tide surge in the estuary area, resulting in a countercurrent.

As a result, as the wet and dry seasons change, the estuary area is controlled by saltwater and fresh water, and now it is the rainy season, the river flow becomes larger, and the sea water temporarily retreats, turning the area into an endless swampy wetland.

Fresh and saltwater interact with each other throughout the year under the influence of tides and seasons, stirring up sediment and bringing organic matter, thus forming a complex and lush ecosystem in this water, attracting fish, shrimp and crabs from the sea and inland to live and thrive here.

As a result, it is also a predatory ground for seabirds and a variety of land and water carnivores, as well as a hunting ground for amphibians such as crocodiles and lizards.

However, at the top of the food chain, it is not the giant saltwater crocodile or the various marsupial mammals that stand at the top of the food chain, but humans.

Historical data show that the estuary area of several major rivers, including the Panlong River, is one of the four major aboriginal human gathering areas in Australia, and the natives here are no less than 200,000 according to later research, and these populations are divided into 300 or 500 large and small tribes, scattered in the coastal zone of about 2,000 kilometers from east to west, and more than 100 kilometers from north to south, according to the data of archaeological excavations in the Old World, these indigenous tribes have lived here for tens of thousands of years.

At eleven o'clock in the morning of January 26, 1657, the blue sail shadow of the Pride appeared on the sea outside the mouth of the Panlong River, and on the deck, the crew looked with curiosity and wariness at the swamp-soaked and lush continent in the distance, and the white, bare earth, salinized highlands near the coastline.

It is still the rainy season, and it is an active period for the indigenous people of the mainland to gather and hunt.

Therefore, Captain Gu believes that we may come into contact with indigenous people during coastal landing survey operations, although this possibility is only a medium probability event in terms of population density, but in order to prevent accidents, we must also make adequate preparations.

So before the exploration team members disembarked, Captain Gu held a special discussion meeting with all the students, and the topic of discussion was: how to deal with the indigenous people when we meet them.