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Published: April 13th 2010
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Day 333 - Kangaroo Valley (Bendeela Reserve)
For the first time in ages there was no need to rush this morning and we had ourselves an extended lie in. It's blissfully peaceful here, just the sound of the birds but other than that nothing else disturbed us. Everyone else must have been in the same frame of mind, it's the perfect spot to relax and there's a distinct lack of activity around the place.
We popped out for a bit of exploration around the local area. Fitzroy Falls wasn’t far back up the huge hill so we went there first and wandered initially through the visitors centre. Here we caught a video showing the birth of a kangaroo, it was fascinating. Neither of us had thought about how a joey actually gets into the Mum’s pouch, I guess we figured that she puts it there but she doesn’t. The tiny joey makes the perilous journey back to the pouch completely under its own steam. And it’s taken us 333 days to find that fact out! Talking of Kangaroos, we’re quite disappointed not to have seen a single bounding beauty in Kangaroo Valley as yet though, where’s the justice?!
Fitzroy Falls is an interesting place to walk around. There are plenty of lookouts to grab your attention and we choose to give ourselves an easy meander through the eastern section figuring we’d get the best views of the falls. We went a lot further than we’d intended but found ‘The Grotto’ and lots of Banksia seed pods to keep us chirping along the way. They’re funny looking things!
After waking ourselves up with a walk we took a drive up to Manning Lookout, a short trip off the highway then a short walk to the lookout for terrific views over Kangaroo Valley. It’s beautiful but there are no other walks to do so we head back to the general store with “The Worlds Best Pies” for sale - it’s a big statement to make so we thought we’d check it out for accuracy! We choose different fillings - Darryl goes for Creamy Chicken (“Morsels of chicken fillets combined with carrot, leek and potato in a creamy mustard flavoured sauce. Comfort Food”) whilst I go for a Traditional Aussie (“Savoury mince beef steak filling flavoured with a touch of onion and our secret herbs and spices …”). Now, we’ve
both eaten quite a lot of pies in our time but these, well these are seriously good, in fact they might just be the worlds best pies!
With full tummies we head off towards Kangaroo Valley township itself and enjoy a bit of a wander through the very twee shops on offer. You’ll find a nostalgic gift shop along the main street, lots of old books and old style gifts and an old ‘looking’ chair outside. Checking out the price tag makes we wonder if we should go into the business of making old chairs look old! Kangaroo Valley Woodcrafts is a good place to ‘window shop’! The superb craftsmanship comes at a price, unsurprisingly and despite about 30 minutes of searching we fail to find a single item that we can ‘afford’! The rocking Kangaroo is gorgeous but $690, sorry, no can do!!
All was quiet back at camp, there weren’t even many wombats out and about on our first walk through but we found some when darkness fell. There’s an amazing amount of burrows here which led us to believe there must be hundreds of Wombats living here, but that’s probably not the case. Common Wombats
can have numerous burrows, even as many as twelve but they’ll use four or five as their main burrows with a series of subtunnels leading to sleeping quarters and multiple entrances! It’s all rather complex! They’re territorial animals and mark their home range by grunting at intruders, rubbing their scent and scattering their cube-shaped droppings. We’ve seen plenty of those close to the caravan!
Another few games of Rummikub, then it was time for bed. We slept soundly until we woke up to the caravan rocking and no, it wasn’t being rocked by us! Something rather sturdy and solid seemed to be rubbing itself against the van, we were being claimed by one of the wombats! We’d camped inside ‘his’ territory and now we belong to him! Well that was just fine and we were quite pleased to have been accepted but we needed to go back to sleep so Darryl took charge of moving the Wombat on. With a grunt and a bit of a huff the wombat waddled off and we went back to sleep!
Dar and Sar
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