"Has anyone spotted any Koala's recently"

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DAY 73

It was a warm enough night, I found myself pushing the sleeping bag out of the way as it was actually too warm.

A good nights sleep if only a little strange for sleeping in the open, well almost anyway, just a mosquito net between the stars and us. We both woke up in the night when we heard an aeroplane fly overhead, Andy quickly went back to sleep but I stay awake listening to the noise of the insects.

The dawn chorus was deafening, the shrill sound of the Kookaburra’s breaking into the easy morning silence. How could it be a dawn chorus? It was still dark. The loud raucous laughter of the Kookaburra is the countries most defining bird call, they vie with each other at dusk and dawn to advertise their territories and they vie over alternate branches of the same tree and fly past each other in dispute. The Kookaburra is a secure species.

A little while later I heard Andy stir, daylight had only just broken and he was already out of bed with the kettle on. Who am I to argue? I am lucky enough to get a cup of tea out of Andy’s habits of being an early riser. He offers to bring it to me in the Swag, but I said I would get up. All was quite around us from the other campers.

Andy and I chatted about our next move. We had been told about an amazing walk to the Bread knife and Grand High Tops, a 12-5 kilometre walk that takes about 4-5 hours. We decided that we would like to do the walk, however starting a walk like that mid morning would not be a good idea as it would get too hot, the only way to do this was to get up early (first light) and go walkabout, so that is what we have planned to do. We will prepare our sandwiches and drink tonight in preparation.

This of course means that we have to stay tonight and not only that I am sure that when we get back after the walk tomorrow we will not be wanting to drive anywhere so the rest of the day we can rest up and move on the following day.

After breakfast we went back into Coonabarabran to get some extra provisions and fill up with diesel, asking the other groups of campers around us if they wanted any provisions, so off we set with an order for the Daily Telegraph and 2 bags of ice. whilst we were sitting having coffee, an excellent little caravan went down the street, aparently they are called "tear drop" caravans. I said to Caroline, wow !! look at that as it rumbled on down the street, unfortunatley I was unable to get to my camera in time.

A couple of hours later, after some internet café time, armed with fresh provisions and full with diesel we wound our way back through the National Park, stopping only at the visitors centre to pay for an extra 2 nights camping and check out a couple of facts about the locality, like “has anyone spotted any Koala’s recently?”. “No” was the answer to that, you have just go to keep looking. I picked up a leaflet with the walking trails on in preparation for tomorrow.

It is cloudy and very humid today I wonder if we will have a storm tonight? Even the Kangaroo’s look lazier today than they were yesterday.


We didn’t get around to having our dinner until 3.00pm, and as it got later and later the though of food did not seem that appealing.

The giant Goanna ambled past, this huge prehistoric looking creature, just wanted to get in the shade, when I pursued him with the camera his just headed for a tree and started to climb.

It was dark and we thought we better have a light tea, so the stove was stoked and we just had some soup.

Andy wanted to go out in the truck back to the visitors centre with our powerful torch, hopefully to spot some Koala, when we got their it was pitch black, no moon what so ever.
Andy jump out and came around my side just to make sure a snake wasn’t on the footpath, you can’t be to careful.

So there we were it was silent and pitch black, concentrating hard on looking in the tree’s and two kangaroo’s shot out of the bush, and started to graze, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Our efforts were not rewarded, Andy was chuckling as he loves me to do my male Koala impression, which he says is as cross between Sigourney Weaver in Gorilla’s in the mist and someone who is insane.
But if we don’t try we don’t see.

We get back to the site at around 10.30, the night is still really warm and we turn in, looking forwards to another night under the stars.

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Photos

Giant Goanna
When I went after him, he tried to sneek up a tree

Goanna
Just before he tried to give me the slip

Goanna
In tree stealth mode

Our Swag
The original swag men were people in the great depression who travelled from town to town in search of work. All they would carry was their swag sleep under the stars.
Our Burke and Willis swag is a modern variation on a theme.

Ant dragging a Corn Flake
This ant was dragging a corn flake back to it's lair, imagine it saying to the other ants.
"LOOK WHAT I HAVE GOT US FOR BREAKFAST"

A regular visitor
Roo's were regular visitors to our camp.

Cicada
The creatures are called Cicada, they are a flying beetle and they only live for 2 weeks. They pupate and break out of their shells and it looks like something from the film alien. These are the creatures that drum on their bellies and makes the noise.
ALL NIGHT.