Here Comes Mr Cotton Tail hopping down the Bunny Trail!

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DAY 485


We woke to a beautiful morning, absolutely beautiful after so much rain last night, and the fact that we had looked at the long range weather forecast which said very bad weather for Saturday, then we were pleasantly surprised to awake with the blue sky and the sunshine creeping in on the skyline.

When I got out of the trailer the smell of the forest just seemed over powering, it seemed so long since we were last this close with nature, we both instantly realised just how much we had missed it.

The Kookaburra’s were all around us, their distinctive laughing broke the silence of the morning, how we had longed to be back, and how glad we were to be here.

We have power at our pitch, the Wendy house complete with awning are in a perfect spot our front door overlooks directly onto rain forest, last night just as I was taking the light down from the awning to put it in the trailer, I just heard a slight sound and found that I was being watched by a reasonably large Possum, who was walking down from a very high tree.

He wasn’t scaling down, as a lumberjack would descend from a tree, but walking down head first using the dextrous little hand and feet and crampons that nature blessed them with.

That probably explains the muddy foot prints on the table this morning, as we had left the washing up outside as we couldn’t be bothered to do It last night, I had expected to hear the plates crashing around as they were being flicked around, however nothing was stirred, the only tell tale sign were the paw prints and a couple of little possum parcels on the table.

The roo’s where out this morning, lying around enjoying the morning sun, or nibbling the grass, not at all bothered by the human intruders into their environment. Oh we love the roo’s they have such soulful faces, it would be great if they could talk, you could just imagine how they would speak, I’m sure their first words would always be “G’day Mate” I would guess perhaps that city Kangaroo’s might be more stand offish.

I looked over to our neighbour who was sitting under the awning of his camper trailer eating his cereal I asked if he wanted a cup of tea, as I had the kettle on, and he said he would just love that, he told us that his wife was still in bed, though usually gets out of bed early when at home but chooses to sleep in when they are away.

He came over with his chair and plonked it down, he extended his hand and said his name was Barry and he and his wife were from Melbourne. Promptly asking if we liked the Patrol and I said that I thought it was just a great vehicle and we have just driven around Australia in it.

We all sat enjoying our cup of tea and warmth from the morning sun, Barry told us that his Nissan Navara is only 4 years old and is very unreliable, it seems that everytime he and his wife go out in it, it breaks down, explaining that recently he had a wheel bearing go, the 2nd one and Nissan don’t now change the wheel bearing but they change the whole axel as it is a sealed unit.

Belinda, Barry’s wife emerged from their Aussie Swag camper trailer and came over the conversations went on without missing a heartbeat. Soon it was 9.15 and we thought we had better see what was happening with Lee and Marylin, so I put our stuff away whilst Caroline went up to their caravan to see what we were doing this morning.

The message came back that we all planned to rendezvous at 10.00am for a walk to the beach, which is only about 300 yards away from us, the waves can be heard rolling in and out all the time.

Caroline and myself were in hiking boots socks and gaiters, but soon reverted back to thongs for our beach walk.

Lee, Marilyn, Caroline and myself reconvened and set off for our gentle stroll down to the beach, as I said before the weather was gorgeous and it was great to be down there.

There were a few families enjoying the Saturday morning, body boarding, swimming and a few young fella’s were doing a spot of spear fishing and as we walked along I was surprised just how many bluebottle stingers lay dead on the sand, the very first time we experienced this was back in early 2007 on the sands of Surfers Paradise.

The Blue bottle “Stingers” are nasty and can spoil your day if you are unlucky enough to be stung and a good dose of vinegar can help sooth the sting until more practical help is available.

The great thing with the stingers is that if you stand on them with protected feet then they pop like bubble wrap and you know how addictive bubble wrap is!

Well the walk along the rocks was great, Lee was busily looking for a blue ringed Octopus to show us, as this small creature lives in the rock pools and inlets, as you would expect here in Australia they are very poisonous but it would be good to see one in its natural habitat.

Just before we climbed the steps back up from the beach, I heard movement in the undergrowth, Tthe slow motion sound made me think is was a large snake but as soon as I caught a glimpse of it I knew it was a large Goanna, such a prehistoric looking creature and I would guess this beauty would weigh about 50 Kilo’s, probably one of the largest we have seen since being in Australia. It just moved slowly across the steps to the under growth the over side and kept going just wanting to be left alone but put it this way with the size of this one you don’t want to be upsetting it, especially as it looked a bit on the tubby side, we wondered if it had just eaten.

When we got back from our walk it was lunchtime and Marylin came over with a chicken and some other bits and pieces and we were soon tucking in to a great lunch.

The afternoon brought with it a much needed trip into Bateman’s Bay to get some provisions, as we certainly needed bread, milk and veggies for tonight, we were going to have lamb roast in the camp oven on an open fire, something we have not done for ages so we hoped we had not lost our touch.

Before we went we needed to go and pay for our campsite so we walked over to the rangers station to pay our fees.

Whilst walking back we saw a big male Roo, with his head in a hessian bag looking for food, he was so far in you could have walked up behind it and given it a little push and it would have gone arse over elbow.

I could just imagine how funny this would be but wouldn’t want a very angry Kangaroo expressing its displeasure, not when you see the size of their claws.

We piled into Lee and Marilyn’s Pathfinder and headed off towards Bateman’s Bay and on route as usual we have to stop as the 3 budding occupants of the vehicle want to take photographs of Fungi, gosh we lead a rock and roll life.

Well we got to Bateman’s bay; Lee and Marilyn said how much it had changed over the years. Thank god for Woolworths is all we can say, we pushed our trolley around and put in the things that we needed for this weekend.

We found a shelf full of large, cute and cuddly “Singing” Bunny Rabbits, that had a little button on the paw and when you pressed it, they began to sing (Peter Cottontail), so I thought it would be great if we got them all singing together.

Each Bunny had his button pressed and to see them all, merrily singing away on their shelf was just so funny we were all standing in Woolworths in hysterics as the bunnies not only sang but gyrated to the sound of the music and as they were all sat in disarray they were working their way off the shelf as Lee and Marilyn confiscated one apparently a present for a niece (likely story!!)

With all the boring stuff done we decided to hang around and enjoy the afternoon, we happened past an ice-cream parlour so suggested that we would shout up the ice creams and off we went with some urgency in our step to get our treat.

Well you know when you buy something and the portion is small, well this was not the case, I can’t remember the last time we had ice-cream but they came out so big I didn’t know weather to eat it or climb it (Caroline thinks the woman in the ice cream parlour must have fancied me, because I had the biggest ice cream of the lot!)

This was the first time I had ever had liquorice ice cream, it was just delicious and the price was pretty good to boot.

We set off and got back to the camp, only a few more people had turned up which was good as we had spied a fire pit where we would do our dinner tonight and didn’t want to loose our spot.

We got the camp oven out and started preparing the lamb and the veggies and soon the pot as nice and full, lee had gotten the fire going and it was burning down nicely, and when we were ready we hung the cook pot from the chain and sat down and had a beer waiting for our dinner to cook.

Then a fellow camper came over and asked if we minded if he put some jacket potatoes to cook amongst the embers of our fire and this was all good so everyone was happy.

Barry and Belinda had come back from their afternoon out and got their chairs and came over to sit with us all. They said they have had another problem with their truck, they think that the wheel bearing has failed again, so they will have to look at it in the morning which may also mean an early departure from here in order to limp to a Nissan dealer, the closest being Nowra.

We told them we were doing a Curry tomorrow night so if their truck was knackered at least we could all have another dinner together.

An exquisite smell of lamb roast wafted through the air and people seemed to stop by our camp oven to check out the smell, as we took it in turn to baby-sit our dinner we seemed to gather a little audience and many questions.

Barry and Belinda said they needed to go and get some dinner on but we insisted that they stay, we knew the portion size would be smaller but hey, we wouldn’t starve and we were all having such good fun, drinking and talking we didn’t want it to end.

Dinner was done, Marilyn had done some broccoli separately and we sat down and served up dinner for six, by now it was dark, but just as we were sitting down for dinner, Caroline noticed a spider dropping from the awning behind her and grabbed the torch, as she shone the light she exclaimed that it was quite a large Red Back, so Barry gave it the Flip-Flop, Flap and that was the end of that.

Dinner was good, quite small portions but we soon bulked it up with pancakes for dinner, complete with fruit, cream and cockies joy, in fact it was Lee and Marilyn that introduced us to pancakes and cockies joy when we met them almost one year ago while on Cradle Mountain, 11th March to be exact.

It was a great evening and the beer and wine was going down really well, but soon Barry and Belinda crashed and burned, followed by Lee and Marilyn about an hour later.

We tidied up the things that needed to be left out like the washing up and joked that the possums would probably descend the tree’s and lick the plates clean ready for us to use again in the morning.

There was one pancake left that nobody could manage, so left it out, as we were sure little hands would whisk it away in the night.

We climbed into bed, it was a lovely and warm night so we threw the blankets off the bed, my head hit the pillow and that was it for me, its that easy.

We enjoyed being back with nature enjoying the sights and sounds of the birds and the Roo’s again, it amazing how you settle in to a routine then suddenly realise what you have been missing.

Until tomorrow!

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Photos

A perfect spot
At Depot Beach, nr batemans Bay

Depot Beach Camp site
Not to crowded

The Possum Pool
After the heavy rain Caroline gets rid of the Possum Pool

Oysters
Formed in the rock

Lee & Marilyn
And the Pacific Ocean