“I have got to check on that thing ..”

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DAY 62

“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to check on that thing”
“What thing?”
“You know, that thing”

Something about this conversation was not right.

“You don’t have to check on anything, everything is alright, we are fine”
Andy looked puzzled, “don’t I?”
“No, all you need to do is get back into bed, you can check on whatever it is in the morning”. Still looking puzzled Andy dutifully got back into bed and went back to sleep.

It was the early hours of the morning, Andy had slept on top of the sleeping bag, starkers as usual, it was a warm night. I am sure if I had not spoken to Andy he would have gone outside the tent in a haze of sleepwalking and quite likely sent the locality of Brunswick Heads into a panic. This is not the first time this has happened, I have many conversations with Andy in the night that make no sense and also he has no recollection of our conversations. I knew he would not remember this one either.

I know not to wake Andy up, but if I talk to him he always responds, so to a degree I could direct him anywhere, perhaps next time I will take him to the jewellers and tell him to buy me some jewellery.

The daylight came and we set about packing up, this is a habit that we will have to get used to again as we now embark further South on our journey. Today we aim for Glen Innes; we stayed there before Christmas when we were on our way down to Port Stephens. It is a charming old Australian town, which has modern aspects to it.

We were listening to the charming bird song from the lorikeets and possibly the Indian Mynah birds, which are in plentiful supply around the camp, however the Sulphur Crested Cockatoo that had appeared interrupted the song with its coarse screams ensuring that if you were asleep, you weren’t now!

We left at 10.00 had a review of the map to finalise which route we wanted to take and decided on heading to Grafton on the Pacific Highway, we had some 300 kilometres to do today.

An uneventful journey to Grafton, there was a lot of traffic, it moved very easily and the roadworks were working again now the Christmas break was over. As we have just had the UHF radio installed we tuned into the frequency for the roadworks so that we could listen to what was happening. This is helping us to ensure that we know how it works and try to pick up some of the lingo. However judging by some of the conversations we have eavesdropped I am not sure that I want to learn some of the lingo, there are words that I have never heard of before!

In Grafton we pulled in to have some lunch, we prepared our lunch for the journey earlier.

We saw a MacDonald’s so as they are rolling out free wifi across 700 outlets in Australia, we decided to see if we could log onto it in their car park, however we were too far away so we had to go in and buy a coffee so that we could log on.

We managed to do most of what we wanted; however the screen on the laptop has started to develop some vertical stripes, there was no option but to switch off and back on again. It did it yesterday when I was on the Internet at the campsite. I was beginning to wonder if we picked up some kind of virus while using the free Internet.

Our onward journey took us up the 38 towards Grafton along the Gwydir Highway that was completed in 1960; this takes us 157km through the Washpool and Gibraltar Range National Parks. Once again the scenery changes to something more dramatic, the green landscape becomes more lush as we start to follow a creek up the highway that opens out into a huge rocky river, the road starts to climb and we are left with stunning views across the valley.

We came across some traffic lights for roadworks, they were doing work to shore up the banked sides as there was a risk of rock fall at Mulligans cabin There were signs dictating that you should not attempt to stop any rock fall, I have to say that I would not want to attempt to stop any rock fall.

You can feel the temperature dropping as we are now climbing from 6 metres above sea level to something like 500 metres above sea level, we knew that we were going to climb much higher than that.

We stopped at a pull in to admire the view, the moment we opened the doors and stepped out all we could hear was this amazing birdsong. I have recorded some but I am not sure if I am able to embed this into the blog. The rest of the landscape remained peaceful but for the song.

We past our first road sign for wildlife, Caution Quolls, a Quoll is a long tailed marsupial.

On and on we drove, higher and higher we went, again we stopped at a look out, I needed to use the loo, and when I came back Andy was beckoning me, he had looked under the Armco barrier and saw something low and black looking at him and thought it was a snake, as he got closer to it, it was quite a big black lizard that we think to be a skink, it just stayed there motionless, and its young was just close by. Beautiful wildlife, such a pity that thoughtless littering from other people ruined the area.

We drove on and as we pass some trails we promised that we would return whilst in the vicinity to do a walk or two and possibly have a horse ride that we have done several times before.

The view in the distance was full of rain and lightning, and the last thing we wanted to do was set up camp in the rain, Andy had even suggested that we set the swag up tonight if it was a nice night as we need to use it in the rain to seal the seams, the rain makes the sewn seams tighter and waterproof.

Five minutes later the rain was coming down in stair rods, arriving at Glen Innes at 5.00pm, we booked in and found our pitch, unhooked our trailer then went out and had coffee, until the rain had subsided.

When we got back at about 6.50 we needed to get a hoof on to get the trailer unpacked and camp set up. Andy was being a pain in the backside, don’t do that do this, put this here, you know the score. Still we soon made camp and settled in for the night.

After out tea, Andy walked me over to the amenities block for evening ablutions, the amenities here are beautifully clean, when I came out Andy was again beckoning me as I had the head torch, he was watching a Possum that had climbed up the trellis on one of the cabins and was just about to tap dance on the roof.

It had been a long busy day and we went to bed about 9.30 bushed by the events of the day, waiting to see want tomorrow brings.

Goodnight bloggers!

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Photos

Lizard
Andy found this in a rest area, such a pity that beautiful wildlife is surrounded by litter.

Lizard
Look closely at this picture if you can, you should be able to see the baby lizard with its mum.

Quoll Sign
Look out for these little critters along the way. Carniverous marsupials. Females develop a pouch—which opens towards the tail—only during the breeding season, when they are rearing young. Quolls live in forests and in valley land. The quoll belongs to the same family as the Tasmanian Devil.

Washpool National Park
This is only one of the many views over Washpool National Park.