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Published: January 4th 2016
Today was our long day. Every good walk needs at least one epic day! We are estimating this day was about 31km. That maybe doesn’t sound like much but when you already have blistered feet and have been walking for three days and you are walking over sand and rocks… it feels like a long way.
This was also one of the most scenic days though so that eased the pain significantly!
From our campsite we walked to Bawley point (where we did some more hunting and gathering to buy a coffee – and ran in to a friend from Canberra while we were there!) We also walked through an Aboriginal reserve – which has the biggest collection of middens on the south coast and is still of great significance to the Aboriginal people of the area.
We filled up water at Merry beach caravan park even though the sign said it was bore water and not for drinking. We had seen that there was a caravan park here on the map and had assumed we would be able to fill up with water so we didn’t have a choice. Hopefully we didn’t consume too many pesticides and
sunrise
Waking up to sunrises like this negates the need for sleep... almost!we ditched it for some fresh rain water near Pebbly beach a little further down the track. Even though the national park sign also said this water was not for drinking it tasted better than the bore water. While we were filling up here there was a family having a picnic that took great interest in our little adventure. They had never heard of anyone doing such a long walk before. The dad's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he said he struggles even walking to the shops. They asked where we slept at night and couldn't believe we didn't even have a tent. "What if you have bugs crawling over you in the middle of the night?!" They asked incredulously. This was strange for me because a/ I didn't feel that what we were doing was that adventurous compared to what many people do and b/ I grew up bushwalking so the idea that people could get into adult life and not even really know that such an activity existed astounded me. I guess if you grow up in a city and stay in a city all your life and are never given the opportunity to put
a backpack on and 'go bush' it would seem like a really strange thing to do.
We also met some nice locals on the beach just past Bawley point. I had made a comment about how lucky they were to have such a nice place to themselves for most of the year but how they must find it hard to cope with the tourist season and the woman surprised me by saying "Oh no not at all. I like to share the beauty with others." What a refreshing and positive attitude.
I am writing this blog now from my parents in law's house (Batemans Bay) several days after we finished our walk and a/the details are already getting a little foggy and b/ it is nearly dinner time so I am going to keep this short and wrap it up. We ended up finding a beautiful campsite on some grassy dunes south of South Durres, exhausted. We had been walking for about 12 hours. Funny thing is that we had not used the mosquito net we were carrying at all for the whole tri and tonight was the first night we had mossies... and mice! (Funny that it
was just after the couple's comment about things crawling on us over night. Maybe they jinxed us! But we tolerated mice dancing on our face and the few mossies cause we were way too tired to put the net up. When I say 'mice' I think it was only one and I am sure it was a nice native little marsupial mouse and it mostly jumped on Jono (about 4 times with half hour intervals just as he was going to sleep each time.)
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