Last men standing

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I heard Lee and Carmen being woken up this morning as I drifted in and out of a half sleep. Kemton's twin boys had gone in to wish them happy Easter and show them what they had been bought by the Easter bunny. I chuckled to myself about the fact that Lee and I had agreed to have a lay in today, and felt for him having been woken up earlier than expected. Sadly my feeling of smugness was short lived as Jet, one of the twins, and Keith unzipped my tent door and came in clutching a bag of chocolate Easter eggs in his small hand. I wished him a happy Easter and decided that the best course of action was to get dressed and join in the festivities with the sugar high children.

I boiled the kettle and made two cups of coffee, handing one to Lee and exchanging a knowing look as if to say 'Oh well, eh'. After munching on a couple of my Easter eggs it was that time yet again to help Keith on the water run and with emptying the dunnys. Seeing as I hadn't touched either of them two days ago I thought I ought get involved and test out just how strong my constitution really was. Kemton came with us and as he filled the various water canisters I set about emptying the one of the. Without going into too much detail, it wasn't as bad as I thought and was over fairly quickly.

As we drove back to camp I resolved to go for a run, as the picture Carmen had taken of me on the beach the day before showed me just how much drinking almost everyday since getting to Australia had gone straight to my waistline. I sunk another cup of coffee and asked Kemton how far it was to Freshwater. 'About seven-and-a-half kilometres mate' was his reply, which seemed a bit far for my first run in over two months. I decided go the other way so as to have no particular goal to stick to, and started running barefoot in the tide line. It felt great to be out running along to my iPod, feeling the damp sand between my toes as I went. I wasn't sure how far I'd gone when I started to get tired, and without wanting to overdo it thought it was time to turn around and head back. As I ran back I heard a popping sound from under my foot and didn't think anymore of it until I got back to camp. I rinsed the sand off of my feet and found a small blister from where I'd been stung by a blue bottle. It wasn't painful, but I certainly knew it was there and it made walking on it a bit awkward. I fitted in a quick TRX workout when I got back because I was determined to get back into shape by my birthday.

After a quick rinse in the warm pacific ocean I rejoined everyone for some breakfast. Whilst I was refuelling Carmen suggested going to the lighthouse at the top of Double Island Point. It sounded great, as I'd started to feel a bit stale and bored at camp almost like I'd done everything that there was to do. I got changed as Carmen began busying herself organising a packed lunch to take with us. Keith drove Carmen, Lee and I down to the far end of the beach to the point and we began to climb the steady hill to the cliff top. It was another beautifully hot day and I began to get my sweat on yet again as I had done in Southeast Asia. It felt good to be out trekking again, something that I took a huge amount of comfort from due to the familiarity of it over the last couple of months. We reached the top and I could see Teewah beach stretching out to my right and Rainbow beach to my left, with the wind blowing in from the Pacific ocean cooling me in the early afternoon sun.

After taking the obligatory tourist shots and reading about how Captain Cook came about the name for the point we ambled back down the hill to the car. We stopped just before the bottom to take in the scenery over the cliffs and have our packed lunch before making the long trek back along the beach to camp. It was a bit of a bumpy ride back as the tide was still on it's way out so we had to take the path along the softer sand. Once we got back we sat ourselves down in deck-chairs on top of the dune keeping an eagle eye open for the ice truck. We had all developed a sugar craving from our walk and I wanted another Maxibon. We didn't have to wait long as we'd followed the truck up the beach for a short while on our return journey. After getting my ice-cream fix I started to feel drowsy and headed off to my tent for a blog and a snooze.

As I woke up everyone was returning from their various daily outings and getting ready for the evening. I felt really perky after a combination of my afternoon nap and the deliciously light meal of salad and sausages that Des had cooked. I was so wide awake in fact that the copious amount of beer that both Lee and I drank as we sat by the campfire for the last time didn't even begin to touch the sides. We cooked the remainder of the Pipi's that we had caught yesterday and sat whiling away the rest of the evening by the camp fire. Slowly but surely as the night drew on everyone began to fall asleep next to the fire before making their way to bed leaving Lee and I as the last men standing - a pleasant change after the late nights earlier in the week. Eventually we gave up and made our way to our tents to prepare for an arduous day tomorrow.

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