An ideal day in the valley

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When driving through Kangaroo Valley recently I noticed that the river either side of the main bridge north of the town looked beautiful, and very intriguing. Just before the bridge is a sign advertising Kayak and Canoe hire, therefore I decided it would be a great place to come back at the weekend, as long as the weather was good.

Saturday came around and the weather was ideal, not quite too hot, but beautiful clear blue skies. After stopping in town to buy some sweets for the trip we were off to the Kayak hire shop. We opted for a double Kayak, and after being told roughly where to stop down the river to be collected 5k later, we were off. The scenery was beautiful, as I had expected, and it was quite a relaxing start to our trip. It wasn't long before we found a water dragon sunning itself on a rock, so naturally, Alex decided he wanted to try and catch it. It was very amusing to watch them chase each other through the river, before Alex came up triumphant, and we had a hitchhiker in our boat for the journey. The dragon was laying very still sunbathing, so I allowed him to stay! We soon kayaked past a group of Irish backpackers, who wanted to see what we had caught and proceeded to squeal at the poor creature. Alex then tried to place the water dragon on one of their laps whilst they weren't looking, but unfortunately they noticed just in time, so paddled away and the water dragon was returned to the river.

Most of the river was fairly easy to navigate, however some parts were too shallow and we either had to bump over rocks or Alex had to get out to better navigate the boat with a lighter load! Further down the river we stopped to watch two Kingfishers who were sitting on branches watching the river for lunch to pass by. One kindfisher soon flew off in search of a better vantage point for fishing, however we managed to watch the other for almost 5 minutes before he too flew off in search of a better fishing spot.

As we continued down the river the scenery started to get more repetitive, as we were mostly paddling along beside a big camping ground, so we started to just focus on reaching the pick up point so we could go in to town and get some pies for lunch! My arms were aching by this point so Alex was doing most of the paddling - the definite advantage of having a double Kayak! By the time we got to the pick up point it was 2:30, so definitely lunch time. Good job we had stopped to buy sweets for the journey! It was only a short trip back to the Kayak hire place, and a short drive to town before we could get our pies 😊 I was really impressed by the pies, even the Vegetarian pie and mash I got was amazing! They were so good that Alex bought us a big apple pie to bring home.

After lunch we continued on to Fitzroy falls, where there are lots of walks. The walks are laid so that they continue on from each other, so rather than having to choose a walk at the beginning, you can continue on as far as you like to see more waterfalls and amazing scenery. We ended up walking for just over 2 hours, and had great fun collecting up rocks to throw over the edge of view points. We soon discovered chalky rocks that would explode when they hit the ground with force, so kept ourselves amused by throwing them as hard as we could at rocky ledges far below, and both seeing and hearing them explode.

On our walk back, laiden with big rocks that we had found, ready for the last viewpoint on the way back, we heard a russle in the bushes. I almost walked past, thinking it was just a water skink like usual, so I was very surprised to find an Echidna! I'd been saying for a couple of weeks I wanted to see an Echidna, as I hadn't seen one since I was last in Tasmania, so I was elated to be so close to one. We managed to watch it for around 10 minutes, snuffling about with it's long nose looking for a food. Unfortunately we couldn't get very good pictures as it was in the undergrowth, but now I've seen one I'm sure we'll find more sometime.

All in all it was a great day, and quite hard to believe all these amazing sights are less than an hour away from home.

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