Day 51 Saturday 28th August 2010 & postscript

Pondering at the Upper Gorge


Upper Gorge Lookout



Stick Insect


Kapok Tree


Kapok Tree


Buff sided Robin


Great Bowerbird


Hi All,
The intrepid campers were up and about before sunrise. No this was not because the tent caught fire or was invaded by bull ants. We desired to walk in the cool of the early morning. We walked the 3km to the upper gorge lookout, enjoyed the view and scrambled down to the stream bank before returning along the creek via Indarri falls. While on the walk we met Ingrid and Dieter from Germany who spoke very highly of their Cape Yorke tour with the same company we are going with. We also saw many of the yellow flowering trees pictured above. Not quite sure yet what they are.
We returned to camp by 11am whereupon I had breakfast! The rest of the day was spent pottering. I had my first shower (cold of course) in several days. I was a bit pongy and Susan did some washing getting rid of more of the red dirt! I also hooked up the water heater seeing as we have carted it all the way up here. It works fine.
Another day of full sun saw us fully charge the battery including recharging both laptops. It’s funny how the things that make a good day change when you are out on the road. I also wiped most of the dirt off the bikes although this will probably be futile since we have 200-300km more dirt before we are back on the bitumen.
I leant a helping hand with our neighbour who is changing a blown fusible link in his Prado. An example of how not to design for ease of replacement. Just out of interest I checked the ones on the Pajero which are much easier to replace. Fusible links are generally heavy duty slow blow type fuses designed to stop electrical faults causing fires. Will be interesting to see what happens when he has replaced his 100 amp one as the cause of it blowing is not known. My assistance consisted of lending tools and staying well out of the way. There is nothing worse than doing a job with someone leaning over your shoulder.

Ahh Lawn Hill beautiful one day perfect the next. That could be a tourist jingle.



......POSTSCRIPT

While Simon was up the road uploading the blog I joined neighbours John and Wendy (from Sunshine Coast) for wine and nibbles, having cooked up some garlic crackers (similar to prawn crackers) and assembled a plate of dolmades, cheese, pickles, carrot sticks and biscuits....

Our 5 o’clock drink finally ended at 1045 after several top ups of food and wine. Several parallels between John & Wendys story and ours, shared with laughs and a plan to visit them on the Sunshine Coast.

You meet some really nice people on the road, I’m sure there are such people are at home too, it’s just that you wouldn’t generally walk up to someone in the street and strike up a conversation like you can On The Road.

Susan