Wilderness Adventure Part 1

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So after our coastal drive I decided to take a bit of a detour inland to a place called Barrington Tops National Park. It is 176,000 hectares of wild unspoilt rain forest and in the winter has snow. The drive out thorugh a place called Gloucester was pleasant enough and we were forewarned by the information centre that we needed to take all our own provisions as there is nothing in the park once you get there.

So we headed off with a full tank of petrol and enough food and water for a few days, even though we only planned to stay for one night. Well true to form as soon as we entered the rain forest, you guessed it, it started to rain. This was when we discovered that Tank's windscreen wipers didn't work, this led to the windows steaming up and once we put the blowers on we realised the problem we have been having with the Tank jerking about on the highway is electrical as he started to do the jerk again. Well at least we figured out the problem and can get him fixed so for now I just have to keep jumping out the car and manually wiping the windscreen. All adds to the fun I suppose.

When we entered the park we saw a sign saying we should put the CB radio onto chanel 24 as we would be at least 100km away from anyone to help us if things should go wrong. I immediately got on the CB and tried to call out to anyone who might be listening, I thought about playing them a tune on the guitar but no one seemed to be around so I didn't think it was worth it.

Barrington tops was fabulous, even in the rain. We stopped for a spot of lunch and waited for the heavy rain to stop while playing a few games of cards, which somehow Shenton managed to win them all so now I am stuck making dinner and breakfast, oh well pot noodle it is again I guess. We walked to the devils hole lookout which really was amazing, with all the low mist slowly revealing the valley below.

There was no one around, all the camping seemed to have been at the bottom of the park not up the top where we were 1600 meters above sea level, but after a bit of real off roading where we nearly got ourselves stuck when the track ended abruptly with a fallen tree we decided to set up camp at the Manning river. It was easy to find and once we slid down the big hill in the now very wet tracks we wandered over to the river. Shenton waded right in and said he would be taking his morning bath there tomorrow, however when we got back to camp and he saw about 5 leeches on his legs he decided against that one.....

So we set up camp and I put on long trousers with my socks over the top so to avoid any mosquitos or leeches and after a healthy dinner of pot noodle and not nearly enough guitar playing it started to rain again, so we quickly packed up everything apart from the table and a bag of rubbish which we put on top of the table and got into the Van to watch a DVD. TO BE CONTNUED........

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Photos

Its raining men
I won at cards!

Camp manning river
Nice socks!