Back on dry land we made our way just 40 km down the highway to our next camp spot, Mountain View Lake Eco Holiday Park, between Townsville and Ayr . This site is right on the edge of the Bowling Green Bay National Park and appears with several different names in different publications; we think it is trying to get the most buzz-words in a single name.

We were interested to discover from the owner of the camp site that the Yongala dive site, where we were diving yesterday, is famous for another reason which was never mentioned on our dive boat. You may recall a recent news story regarding a guy who has been found guilty of killing his wife whilst diving on their honeymoon. It is believed that he turned off her air underwater and then went up to the surface without her to say she was having problems. I’m glad to report that we are both alive and well, loving travelling together and neither has bumped off the other!

To get to the camp site we drove a couple of kilometres down a track from the Bruce Highway and found ourselves driving through a huge group of wallabies . Since we’ve been in Oz, we’ve seen loads of dead kangaroos / wallabies at the side of the road but very few alive. However, here lots of wallabies appear in the campsite, particularly around 4.30pm. It’s a scruffy campsite that has seen better days and the toilets and showers are rather grubby but the wildlife is fabulous!

Today we took a walk from the site into the National Park up to Black Rock and the creek, which had lovely clear, cold water. It’s safe to swim in but Jen just cooled off her feet! There were beautiful dragonflies here and cunning spiders who spun webs over the water and then stretched out their legs to disguise themselves as twigs in their webs until something got captured in the web and they could spring into action.

The Black Rock itself is a very large rock standing beside a fast flowing creek amidst a wide range of rock slides where water flows into the creek. This is the dry season but the campsite manager showed us photos of the rocks in Summer when the water is in full flow . Places where we rock-hopped will be well under water later in the year! It would be nice to recount lots of old indigenous stories about Black Rock and its meaning but we’re afraid we’ve not been told any! Perhaps it is just a black rock with no specific importance.

While we were walking through the forest, we noticed that lots of the trees seem to have lost or be losing their bark. These trees stand out really smooth and pale compared to the others. In UK we had always learned that if you take the bark off a tree the whole way round, the tree will die but it is not clear that this applies to Ozzie trees! We require help from those of our friends and relations more attuned to things natural.

The other thing that is big here is ants! We seem to specialise in Green Tree Ants. They are BIG and their bite is vicious! They make a nest by weaving together leaves on a tree, joining them with silk-like stuff. They seem to live in it, occasionally dropping out onto such as Tony and me in order to bite us. In our camp site, the nest themselves seem to regularly drop out of the trees, the ants then running around madly, wondering what is going on and looking for humans to bite. Not everything in Oz is good!

Rangy caught up with us again but I have to say that he is really looking the worse for wear. He seems to be having long nights on the town and when we do see him he looks shocking! We can hardly get a decent comment out of him before he's out on the tiles again. No good will come of this...