In the company of friends

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Day 212 - Coronation Beach

It’s a beautiful little girls birthday today, Happy Birthday Millie! We hope you have a very lovely day and a lot of fun. Here’s a great big hug and kiss from both of us!

The morning after the night before is never a pretty sight! Despite going to bed around midnight I was wide awake just gone 5am and was up and about by 5.30. Bel was already at the washing up bowl as she’d been woken by the wind flinging everything around the camp and past her camp trailer window! Each time we had a pile of clean bowls and plates the wind would blow them off the table and back into the sand, it was a vicious little circle to contend with so early in the morning and with fuzzy heads!

Darryl was flat out in the caravan for an hour or so longer, sadly he deleted the photograph I took of him whilst snoring away - shame, it was beautiful!

People slowly surfaced and the camp regained life with Simone & Nigel cooking up poached eggs on toast all round. That picked most of us up and those it didn’t headed for comfy chairs or the hammock (Darryl)!

Nige went off into Northampton to get some water and a few other things, the rest of us read, blogged, journalled, played or generally chill-axed in our beautiful environment. Beth and Zali made us some gorgeous pictures for the inside of the caravan and then we all thought about wandering down to the beach - it would be a shame not to have a little dip in the water!

Mauritzio is a keen spear fisherman although today he’s off again to catch cray fish so Belinda and Nige try their luck but Bel returns to us for a snorkel and leaves Nige with Mauritzio and his prey, the unsuspecting cray fish. We went for a great snorkel and Bel found us an octopus to stare at amongst the sea weed. We’ve not really snorkelled amongst seaweed before so it was a bit freaky to begin with but swimming above it is actually interesting and there are plenty of beautifully coloured fish here. We even found crayfish hiding from Mauritzio and Nige on the ledges! The beach is a great place to relax and read and play with the kids plus it was a good vantage point to watch the hunter gatherers in action!

We’re struggling to keep up with the blog still but thankfully our days haven’t been so full on lately so fingers crossed we’ll get time to catch up before we set off on the usual trail of ‘adventure’. Thanks for the messages from Josh Coulsell and Paul Gowers - absolutely fantastic to hear from you both and we're so chuffed that you found the time to read the blog. Big smiles all round from over here!

Mauritzio struck gold with the crayfish again and we were treated to another delicious dish of seafood. Simone slaved in the camp trailer all afternoon making falafel which was also delicious and topped off by Bel’s hummus. Awesome, it’s so good being with people who can cook and hey, I might even learn something! Here’s hoping!!

We leave here tomorrow but we’re not sure where we’re all heading yet but it will be in the general direction of Perth slowly dragging our heals before the group splits up on Friday for a week or so and then for good.

With this great family atmosphere around the camp and the Missy Higgins song “Steer” playing in the background as everyone enjoys dinner, for the first time on the trip I finally get a pang of wondering how we will cope walking away from all the fabulous people we’ve met out here. The only way I manage to balance my feelings and not dissolve into a flood of tears is to go look at all the photos on the laptop from back home of both our families and our beaut mob of friends, with that done it reminds me, us, there’s a lot to look forward to at the end of this journey. Another adventure closer to home could be on the cards!

See you all soon

Dar and Sar

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