The Patter of Tiny Feet

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DAY 120

Suddenly awake in the dead of the night, it was pitch black but there was no mistaking the sound of the patter of those tiny feet around the campsite and over the roof of the trailer tent, I heard a shuffle by the zipper and I could hear that familiar sound of the zip pulls clinking together. Sitting upright in bed, I grabbed the torch and flicked it around the tent, we were still all clear there were no Possums inside the tent, but I am sure they were trying the zipper. We have been told that some of them find that they can pull the zips open with such ease.

After a short while the noise stopped, I turned off the torch and went back to sleep, determined that these critters were not going to ruin another nights sleep.

The night had been cold, but we were cosy with our new blanket draped over the bed. We slept in again, I am sure it is these cold mornings. I heard people moving around outside, so I peered out through the fly screen. I had my eye on a campsite last night hoping that one or two people might move on today.

My hunch was correct two people moved out this morning. So hurriedly we got out of bed, dressed and although we put the kettle on to brew up for a cup of tea, we started to move some of our gear over to a newly vacated site which would be far more private and comfortable than the makeshift one that we squeezed into last night.

Before long the tent was down hooked up to the Patrol and on the move. It was obviously not packed away properly as we were only moving 15 metres up the dirt track.

We moved into our new home quite swiftly, tent up and the awning poles up, we sat and drank tea and ate our breakfast. We did not want too busy a day today (when do we ever actually?)


We popped out to Bicheno, as usual we needed a few groceries and wanted to go to the launderette to do some washing. A fairly little town, but very touristy, I think there were more motels and holiday accommodation around than anything else.

Just before we went into IGA, we popped into the local tourist information place. Andy asked if we could recharge our laptop there, she said no problem but it will cost you $2, agreed. We left it while we went shopping.

A few groceries later we drove across the road to the launderette. We put two loads of washing in for $4 each then went and sat in the coffee place a few doors up. I thought that it would be easy to buy a couple of coffees and sit and wait for the washing. Not really, they seemed to be fairly busy, but not that busy however there was only 2 of them in there, one being a very young girl who did not really know what she was doing.

I gave the young girl my order for 2 skinny latte’s, paid for them and waited and waited and waited, she took orders off some other people, all she was doing was writing them down and leaving them on the counter. The other guy just seemed to be rushing around doing everything but serving outside on the counter and taking no notice of me.

I thought I would wait a couple of minutes and then ask if someone was actually going to make the coffee, then she came back to me again with her order pad and said “Can I help you?” I looked at her and said “you already have my order and my money and now I am waiting for my coffee”. She did not say another word, or crack a smile, a smile seemed to be the furthest thing from her mind, but I did eventually get my coffee.

Half hour later we were back in the launderette, washing unloaded and back in the car, then off we went just to top up with diesel, fill the 25 litre & 3 litre water container with water and hopefully find some firewood.

We could not find any firewood at all, but we did stop at the blowhole on the way back to camp. The Bicheno Blowhole is quite amazing, the force of the water pressure forces the water to spray up through a hole in the rocks. The sea was pretty rough crashing into this amazing rock formation on this coastline.

We watched for a while then just as we were walking back to the truck, we found that there were adult fairy penguins taking shelter under some of the rocks, there were a few around.

Getting back to the truck happy with what we had achieved for the day we drove back to camp. Andy strung a line for the washing to dry, and I sat and typed up the blog for the previous day.

We found out today that some travellers are using generators to help them out with power on these free sites. Nowadays some of these caravans have such big power usage with satellite, TV’s, microwaves and the like power is a necessity otherwise batteries are drained quite quickly.

Keith over the way said that we could plug our Power Gorilla into his generator to recharge it; otherwise we have to use the next days sunshine to recharge it. Great to use solar energy but you are reliant on those UV rays.

Andy cooked a mind-blowing chilli for tea, while we were eating it a lady walked past and stopped to talk. Cathy explained that they were from Melbourne, they sold up everything had a custom built caravan made and now they are on the road for a year looking for somewhere else to live. They felt that it was easier to sell up before finding somewhere else to live.

They are Australian and have also lived in Perth, but she said it is a big country and there might be somewhere just as nice to live. They have a little boy, Kyle, he is now out of school, but in Australia they are allowed to do this with the use of Distance Education. A certain number of modules have to be completed monthly and Kyle speaks to his teacher every 3 days. It is actually said that children who do this are usually a year or two ahead of their classmates who are channelled through normal school. Not to mention the learning about the flora and fauna he is getting on their amazing journey.

Cathy invited us over for a drink, but we declined for tonight saying that we would pop over tomorrow night. We had a few chores to do, a game of cards and then to bed.

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Photos

Thar She Blows
The blowhole does her stuff

Hiding from the sun
This Fairy Penguin is unusual to see in the day time

Waiting for Dark
Another Fairy Penguin out of water and waiting for dark.

New Camp
Solar power working and the washing hanging out to dry.