Day 3 – A Walk in the Woods (apologies to Bill Bryson)

We decided to stay on our unpowered site instead of moving to a powered site and as luck would have it, it was a lot warmer this morning so staying in bed wasn't as much of a luxury as it was the night before!

When discussing our trials and tribulations with the temperature with the nice lady behind the counter at Takarakka I told her and an interested lady customer about our stay at Bowenville Reserve . I mentioned that we awoke to facilities that were non functional and when asked why I had to censor the story a bit and once I mentioned that someone there must have consumed an entire "trusty steed" the night before, they worked out what the issue was and burst out laughing and strangely didn’t want any more details!

We grabbed a quick brekky and headed for the bush…

As the wireless internet connection here at the bush camp is something less than rapid, I may not get to upload any of the many pictures we took today until we find a faster connection.

The gorge is a nice walk and the cliffs are pretty impressive. We decided the 12km walk to the “Art Gallery” was likely to be interesting and that we’d stop off at “The Amphitheatre” on the way back. Graeme kept asking me if I felt youthful as grey nomad after grey nomad crossed our path. I reminded him that I too was somewhat grey around the edges but have to admit that I did feel quite sprightly upon our return to the jumping off point!

We had a good chinwag with a pair of couples from South Australia who were travelling together and met a group fully kitted up for the “great walk” of 85 km right around the gorge…masochists!

Both the art gallery and the amphitheatre were interesting . Must say though that the amphitheatre is striking. It is a giant hole down through the sandstone, probably about 50 metres deep, it is eerily silent with no bird life and hardly any sound of dripping water. It is quite a soothing almost reverential experience sitting there soaking it up.

We munched through our lunch sitting there and of course tested the acoustics, I can report that a GG quack does indeed echo! (Well it was reverential for a while!)

We wended our way back to base, enjoyed a beer with some smoked salmon and a variety of cheeses (have I mentioned how we’re roughing it this trip?) then decided that accessing the wifi and uploading these blogs over a coffee would be a good idea. Pity the implementation has let down the intent somewhat!

We listened to a local speak about the gorge at the usual 4.30pm briefing session for a while then checked out to (supposed) platypus pool, took some photos of the peaceful afternoon scenes around the creek and whipped up a meal in the well serviced but somewhat distant camp kitchen . Incidentally, we are about 20m from a camp kitchen, equipped with all manner of appliances but which is reserved for the elitists who book the little “studios” - basically a tin box with an airconditioner (I’ll upload a photo).

There was an interesting mix of campers and vans in the park yesterday, we saw some serious off road gear and some moving palaces. Today a whiz bang looking “Bolwell” van pulled in, but after chatting with the owner for a while it had been back to the manufacturer a couple of times and has had a couple of modifications, still she seemed happy with it.

It’s drizzling now, we’re watching a dvd so before I fall asleep…