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Published: October 15th 2009
Sunset
Lake TinerooDAY 342
5.00am this morning I was wake, rolling around the bed trying not to disturb Caroline, I was awake before the light and as soon as the day came up the birds “kicked off” in the tree just over from our trailer, I wondered if they were each speaking to the specific members of their bird family or other members of the bird world some where else in the same tree, or where they just making a noise, or had they something important to say, it is fascinating listening to them
I was so glad to wake up at Fong-on Bay at Lake Tineroo, as it’s the place where we went to sleep last night strangely enough, it is a most beautiful place and we love it, its our 3rd time here in a short stay whilst being up here in Northern Queensland.
We are having our two day holiday at Lake Tineroo as Julie, who’s house we sat whilst she was in the UK, is going away for a weekend and said if we wanted the house we could have it from Friday. We had e-mailed her to see if her and Sen would
want to get together with us for a drink, and she responded by telling us we could use the house if we so wished, so tomorrow we will go back to her lovely “Rain Forest” pad and enjoy a couple of days in suburban Cairns, which we like.
I got the fire going from just after 6.00am and sat around in the morning sun shine drinking my favourite brew and reading my book, I noticed Caroline had not stirred so left bothering her with a cup of tea until she surfaced at around 8.00am, and as soon as she had her first cup of tea, I boiled the billy on the fire to do last nights washing up.
I had said to Caroline last night, when we were sitting around the fire would it be great if we saw a Python cruising about out hunting tonight, but I don’t think she quite shared my enthusiasm for such an encounter.
So today we had washed up and put our stuff away, we had a cup of tea and some breakfast and we moved our chairs to under the tree’s for shade looking out over the lake.
Caroline
Sunset
Lake Tineroo head her head in her book and I was on the last chapter of my book when I heard Caroline say, “Oh my God!” I looked up and about two feet from her a snake was just motionless, I said just stay still and it won’t bother you, she was already as still as a tower of salt and the creature just moved of on its merry way.
We both heaved a sigh of relief and Caroline said that she felt very blasé about it, I said that she did exactly what she was supposed to do which was not to panic either her nor the snake and the out come would be a successful one which in this case it was.
“Sods law” we always try to have a camera with us at all times, and we always leave the dam thing out of reach when we need it most.
The snake was about 3 ft long was quite slender and from what we are trying to both remember was olive in colour with bronze, I say it was on its back whilst Caroline says she thought it was on its side, but whatever, we had another snake interaction fortunately as positive one.
On a positive note we both acknowledged that snakes are around, and just because we have not seen one for a long time we must always be on our guard. I am thankful that we managed to fix the zip in the tent (it broke again while in Cape York), the most important thing is not to get a snake in the tent.
After all this excitement we thought we would go and have a scout around for some fire wood, as tonight we would like a fire and hope we can find some wooden rounds. So, off we shot in the truck and in no time at all we had 3 nice big rounds that we will have to put the axe through later.
We dropped the wooden rounds off at our fire pit and parked the Patrol under the tree in a nice shady spot, as we though it was time that we got back in to our books again.
The family who’s little fella walked over last night looking for 32 fish scales, were leaving today and had started to pack up, when they were done they came over and said goodbye and we waved them off.
We sat around in the afternoon shade, reading when another fella whom came over to introduce himself yesterday, dropped over, Peter and his wife Heather whom we have not met, are from Cairns, we were telling him about the snake encounter and from our description he thought it may be a Taipan but we won’t get excited until we do a bit of research.
We asked Peter if he knew if “Mummy” had been captured at Yorkies Knob, that was the 7.1 Mtr Scrub Python that had been on the loose, he told us that people had been aware of the huge Pythons at Yorkies Knob boat club for many years, and thinks mummy has not being found yet
He also told us that the day Steve Irwin lost his life, when he was up at Port Douglaf in the “Low Isles”, a snake at Holloways beach had been found in the roof space by a builder doing a house renovation which was 8 mtrs long and apparently Steve Irwin had been informed and was himself going to try and retrieve it, but sadly never got to do so.
Peter told us his wife had taken a job and her area of responsibility was far North Queensland, including Bamaga and Seisia. His wife had gone on a “Field trip” with her new colleagues to see what she would be in charge of and they had all set up a camp at a beachfront campsite in Seisia, the night was hot so Heather slept in her tent with the door open.
Whilst asleep she had a funny sensation in her foot, and being half and half just tried to brushed it off, when it wouldn’t stop, she woke up only to find her foot and her ankle in a Pythons mouth, and Peter said when she was telling him what had happened and showed him the “Needle” marks of the snakes teeth when they caught her skin as they were pulling the Python off her foot.
Peter is a really nice guy he was interested in our adventures and said we have seen a lot of Australia, probably a lot more than lot of Australians. Peter explains that they usually go bush for a month or so and like to go and get away from it all on a cattle station or somewhere were they don’t have any human contact, but this time his wife felt like a change.
We talked about camp ovens, and he told us last night they had a lamb roast and would be having the rest of it tonight, that sounded familiar.
The afternoon drifted by and I cleaned some of the red dust out of the patrol, we filled the camp oven with water and set it on the fire and boiled it away then wiped it out with kitchen roll, (the best way to clean a camp oven).
The rest of last nights lamb roast was loaded back in the pot and put back on the fire to warm up and in no time at all it was ready, the only modification we made was to thicken up the gravy.
When it was ready it was gorgeous, lovely and rich, the gravy easily mopped up with a slice of bread, and with the fire burning nicely we just finish our evening again gazing at the stars and listening to the sounds of the bush.
One last thing for six days now we had had front page on the travel blog with our last six entries, we usually have 100 hits a day so as today being the 15th of October it would be correct in assuming that our blog hits for this month would be 1500, well when we looked today the count was at 2585 so nearly 1000 hits in front of where we should be that is amazing, so thank you to all our readers.
It has been a nice easy day just kicking back which we are pleased about as Cape York was quite a tough journey with the road conditions and concentration required, we both needed a much earned easy day.
The campsite falls quiet and gradually the lights in the distance go out, you can see the occasional small light bobbing around on the water, some keen night fishing going on no doubt.
It was 9.00 and time for bed, so until tomorrow!
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Jo Trouble
Jo McCarthy
Sunset :-)
Love those sunset photos!