Day 187 - I woke to the sound of a truck's air brakes being set and hissing. What is this? Saturday, middle of nowhere! Look out the window and there was 5 or 6 work trucks around! How unlucky for us as we come to find out they came to chop down a few dead trees that pose a hazard. Of all the days!! We weren't ready to listen to the music of chainsaws first thing in the morning so we got out of there quick. We drove the endless dirt road to the paved one and about 5 more minutes to Broken River, the number one spot in the world to see the elusive platypus. We walked to the viewing platform before we even had coffee and within minutes got our first glimpse. We were expecting something at least the size of a beaver, but man are they small and adorable. The males grow to about 50cm max and weigh in at just over a kilo, the females being even smaller. They live in freshwater around the east coast of OZ. They use their flat tails for fat storage and stabilization while swimming. The males also have a venomous spur in their tail. Their bills are filled with electroreceptors to find their food as they close their eyes and ears while under water. While having coffee and breakfast we made bacon sandwiches for lunch on bacon and cheese buns for our hike. Well the hike was almost canceled because these platypus are just so damn cute. We got what is apparently an unlikely video of a bird and a platypus playing hide and go seek. It was too much, the bird followed the platypus, then the platypus would submerge followed by the bird then the bird would resurface look for it, then duck back in, then the platypus would surface followed by the bird and so on. This is when we though this was just too cool to leave and postponed the hike. We then found a track along the river which turned out to be a hidden gem! It was only about 200 meters and ended at a rock pool. On the way there, movement caught our eye and we seen a big Lace Monitor. We climbed off the path onto a few rocks to get a closer look. I got to say here, that there is something to seeing wildlife in the wild. We seen these monitors at every little zoo we stopped at but to see it in it's own habitat, way cool. After that detour we made it to the rock pool and sat around the rocks watching the elusive (Which now we question) platypus play while eating our sandwiches. We were undisturbed for what seemed like hours and thought this place must not be on too many people radar, till we got back from the walk and the parking lot and main area were filled with people and kids. The universe evening itself out for our early morning bad luck!
We shared our secret with an older couple that were studying the map as we walked by, then went on our postponed hike. On the way back to the van we happened to run into the taht couple who were really happy we shared with them the hidden gem as they too seen the Platypus. It was time for us to head back as we made plans to hang out with Ash and a Canadian backpacker named Andrew we met a few days earlier. Andrew is here from Alberta on the same visa as us. We met them for a couple beers at a local pub called Taylor's missing happy hour by about 10 minutes. After beers we headed to Shoal Point for the night, we heard it was a good place to stay.