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Published: August 14th 2009
Day 108 - Bedrock Village, Mount Surprise
A quick shout out to Miss Emilia Fox who is turning one today! If somebody from Tradeteam could just let her Mum Fi know that we sent a Happy Birthday message then we'd appreciate it, thanks. Morning’s here! We snuck a quick look outside the door to see if the lovely ‘stray dog’ we’d made great friends with last night was still asleep by our step! She wasn’t, she’d eaten the lamb bones left over from dinner and the treats that we’d found in the cupboard, had a drink of water from the bowl we’d put down for her and just made it look as if she was in for the night!! She’s obviously not really a stray and went home to her warm bed somewhere nearby! We wondered if she would return tonight for another feast!
And relax! With luck and a fair wind, today would be a relaxing day spent around the Bedrock Village campsite. We’d all decided that spending another day to just chill out would be great! Sorry, does that sound like we’re taking the micky?!
Before we gathered for breakfast, blogging and general merriment we
needed to book in for another night! I’d already walked to the office once this morning just gone 7am but there was no sign of anyone, just a huge pile of general supplies dropped at the front door! Caroline and I walked back down just after 8 and were greeted by Jo, the female half of the campsite owners. We actually met her husband Joe yesterday! It was no problem for us to book the extra night and whilst we were doing that we spied the poster about a mystery tour leaving from the camp late afternoon! Should be a bit of a laugh, we’ll be back later to put our names down once we’ve checked it with the boys! It was at this point I mentioned the lovely dog we'd met last night and Jo smiled knowingly "You've met Molly then"! So, she's not a stray after all then, she's the campsite doggie!!
With breakfast eaten and some more work completed on the blogs we ventured out for a bit of a ramble to the creek behind the camp. We check with the office the easiest way to get there and they point to the railway line and
tell us to follow it. There’s nothing expected along the line today, they say, it’s only used once a week. We reach the creek and walk along for quite some distance, all the while looking out for wildlife, remarking on the stunning Paperbark trees surrounding us and of course looking for shiny gems!
As we chatted happily away the subject turned to the poetry on the inside of the toilet doors around the camp! This is proper Bush poetry, not the normal musings you find on the doors at Shakespeare County Raceway toilets back home! Anyway, these bush poems are brilliant so we, The Wallaby Wanderers challenged Kangaroojack to a bit of poetry writing with the finished articles to be read out over dinner! The challenge was accepted and extended with the suggestion from Kangaroojack that each team should identify a specific word for the other team to include! Extended challenge accepted!! Andy was already asking for paper to write down ideas as we continued along the creek!! There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition!!
We enjoy our ramble, have fun taking some photos but then one half of Kangaroojack declares they are nearing an “ECB”. We
look quizzically at one another waiting for the explanation! “Emergency Code Brown” laughs Andy and heads back towards the camp toilets via the quicker route up over the creek hill! We’re still laughing as we ramble our way back, although the remaining three of us did stop for a while ‘hand fossicking’ in the hope of more Topaz but alas it was not to be!
Back at camp the sun was blazing down so we all decided to head for the swimming pool area. The expansive camp kitchen is here too so there’s plenty of seating and tables for us to catch up on the blogs and get the creative juices flowing for the poems! We give Kangaroojack their word - Inter Planetarium! They give us ours - Reticulated! Great! The rest of the afternoon was spent chatting to owner Jo’s parents who were just delightful and then working on
the blogs, eating a bit of lunch and of course trying desperately to come up with a poem! Another of the camps colleagues had wandered over to fix the power in the camp kitchen, his name is Steve and he’s pretty spot on with snakes so Caroline should him a photo with a snake they weren’t 100% sure about. They’d seen it dead on the road back towards Mt Garnet and Steve confirmed it looked like a Taipan! Lord alive, we’d been rambling in the bush this morning and then we find we’re in Taipan country!! Crikey! We also had a photo of a snake that we’d been struggling to identify. Back on July 31st we wrote 99 Blogs not out whilst we were in Cairns. We’d seen what we thought was a Red Bellied Black Snake but were struggling to believe it because it was so far away from it’s natural habitat being close to the sea water on the esplanade. Having looked at our video and the fuzzy photograph, Steve declares he believes it to be a highly venomous Red Bellied Black Snake. Yikes! We thanked Steve for his time and it was lucky he came along because
he also gave us the inspiration for the end of the poem!!! You can read the end results on each of these blogs on
Bloggers poet society and
Bedrock Bush Poetry, please give them a read and don’t be afraid to send us comments, we love getting those!
We all managed a quick swim in the pool with the perfect temperature for a hot day, freezing! The day had been great but had whizzed by pretty quickly and it was soon time for the Mystery Tour! The buses are at reception with crowds of people waiting to board! Blimey, there were only the four of us when we signed up for it this morning but now it looks like the whole campsite is coming along!
Mount Surprise is the sort of outback bush town that people drive straight through, although we hadn’t done that this mystery tour was about to show us all the places we’d missed and what we couldn’t possibly have known! We drive out the back of the campsite with Stewie at the wheel and we’re soon uncovering a few surprises! Would you like to spend all day flying a helicopter? Well the chap who lives just past the
campsite does just that, he musters cattle with his! He must still be out working as there’s only one helicopter in the garage - he’s got two! Onward we go towards Mount Surprise itself which is nestled just beyond the airstrip, passed the station where the Savannahlander will arrive tomorrow across the railway line next to the camp, the one we’d rambled over this morning! Stewie points out lots of sites and we drive through the only free vehicle wash in Australia but sadly it’s not working. We hope it’s fixed for the morning because we want to use it ourselves! Passing the local school we laugh out loud when we see the update on the sign which reads POMS 1 Convicts 1! They never miss a trick!
Back at Bedrock we spy a helicopter banking steeply and it looks like it’s going to land in the campsite! What an arrival! We’ve no idea who the pilot and his passengers are but seemingly they popped in to spend the night and we hope they enjoyed the flight as we certainly enjoyed watching! Caroline and I wander back to town taking a few photos along the way as it’s likely
that Darryl and I will be leaving in the morning so I didn’t want to miss things.
Back at camp we were still stuffed from the late lunch Bacon & Egg sandwiches and fried Spam so we left dinner until later on! That can only mean one thing, poetry time! We tossed a coin for the choice to go first or second, it’s our choice and we decided to get it over and done with! Being the slightly emotionally charged Muppet that I am, the tissues are nearby just in case I crack part way through! I just about manage it and it’s well received by Kangaroojack which pleases us both. Kangaroojack take the stage and read their fabulous poem, it’s about their long adventure around Australia and how we came to meet them. What a great effort by both teams and definitely something special for us to keep in our hearts as a memory. You can check out our poem by reading their blog Bedrock Bush Poetry and you can check out their poem by reading our blog Bloggers Poet Society! It’s amazing how we all feel we’ve known each other for years and we’re sure we’ll instigate
a reunion before we leave this wonderful country to head home.
Time for dinner and Kangaroojack offered left over curry which is splendid, very tasty. Thankfully there was a helping of Chicken Jalfrezi as well as the Pork Vindaloo the other three tucked into. Although I can eat Tom Yum Soup these days (courtesy of Grant’s fabulous culinary skills) a vindaloo is probably still beyond my capabilities!
We’re all tired and weary now so bid each other farewell and nearly trip over Molly who has again returned to relax outside the caravan door! Bless her we didn’t think it fair to feed her curry though so instead got the dog treats out again!
Sweet dreams and hope to hear from you all soon.
Love and best wishes
Dar and Sar
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