Is it Monkey?

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DAY 171



We (I) had a good nights sleep, Caroline tells me that though the music stopped at a reasonable time, though a lot of the swearing and shouting carried on well into the night, I think that Caroline has taken to wearing ear plugs to try and block some of the sound out otherwise she does not sleep. I heard some arguing at some point during the night but then I fell asleep and the night fell silent again.

I got up and put the kettle on, not on the open fire as it had burned out over night, it was still hot and with a little care could be brought back to life quite easily, but just for a cup of tea, it would be very wasteful to burn more wood.

The sunshine this morning was excellent and it was nice and warm (very warm) so we sat around and Caroline knocked up a bacon sandwich whilst I uploaded the blog, we have decided to stay here at Leschenault Peninsula Conservation area for one more night as we just love it, and the 3 days we have been here having been really relaxing.

Our forward plan is we are going to see our friends Cliff and Sue in Scarborough, Perth and they have kindly offered to put us up for a short while, which will give us the opportunity to discover the surrounding area.

Cliff is due back on his gas rig on Thursday as he has been away from his position for 10 week whilst they have had an adventure. We initially met these lovely peeps on Kangaroo Island and it was so nice to get on so well with them, and we again met them for the 5th time at Port Lincoln where I had the absolute pleasure of Oysters Kilpatrick which as I have said before where just fab.

We knocked around this morning and two people who were camping near us through the tree’s were leaving today, they came over and asked us if we wanted any fresh water, as they didn’t want to cart it back to Perth. “Yes please”, we said so we took our water container over and everything else we owned and filled them up, It is great to keep our supply topped up, rather than worry about how low we may get before our next available top up.

The people asked if we heard the din last night and we said that we had, they were of the same opinion as we were and that they were a pain in the ar*e, they had arrived late and p****d off early without paying and in the meantime just disturbed everyone else.

Caroline suggested that if that was all they wanted to do then they could have gone down to the beach and disturbed no one. These people had said that one of the lads had urinated right in front of their friends tent last night (who were in the next bay down) and the husband just wanted to go out and fill this guy in, but his wife said leave it alone as you don’t know if they retaliate.

It is a shame that each one of us is thinking the same thing, we all want to go and tell them to put a sock in it and each one of us says we cannot for fear of retaliation. So these kids will get away with it time and time again.

This is what we have heard from other travellers who have enjoyed bush camping in the past and have since stopped as they have become uncomfortable or have been frightened off by these hoodlums and it is not fair. Some have told us that they carry a gun and a single shot into the air seems to do the trick. Of course we do not want to go down that road, this is where things get ugly.

I wonder how people feel when their small children are subjected to this? Why should we all feel helpless? Does ignoring these hoodlums do the trick to keep them quiet or does it make it worse? I am thinking about the Super Nanny technique of not paying attention to a child that is constantly craving attention and misbehaves to get it. We could allocate a “Naughty Tree” and ask each one to sit on the tree until they have thought about what they are doing.

Ranger Smith rocks up this morning and stops by for a chat, we tell him about last nights shenanigans and he tells us that if we have an axe we should wander up to them with it, but again we cannot go down that road that’s when it leads to trouble.

We went for a bush walk, the view over the Leschanault Inlet is amazing, there is so much bird life on this stretch of water. The Kookaburra’s always fascinate us, they hang round us and are not bothered by human activity at all, they concentrate hard on finding their food, which appears, out of the ground at some intervals.

During our walk, we see a Skink, he was hard to spot and I only saw him when my foot fell right by the side of him, it makes you wonder if you really would have spotted a snake in this environment as they can be so well camouflaged, as long as you are careful and look where you are walking then it should not be a problem. We are constantly on the lookout for snakes, so (A) we don’t get bitten and (B) we want to see as much wildlife as we can.

This skink remained still while we looked at him at took photo’s but more or less as soon as we walked away the skink vanished into the undergrowth.

It was a hot day already, we went back to camp did a few chores and then drove over to Belvidere Beach.

There was quite a bit of activity on the beach, 4x4’s were numerous with tracks across the sand, everyone seemed to be fishing, except for a small group of people with a quad bike on the sand, they had a body board and the Quad was towing a young chap on the body board, it seemed to be quite successful, Sand Surfing, as long as this chap stayed with his weight on the back, if he leaned forward then he did a face dive into the sand.

They were having fun, Caroline went paddling, I asked her if the water was monkey, she said yes but not as cold as some areas we have been, you get used to the temperature pretty quickly (When we talk about Monkey, it means when you get in the water and its cold you make sounds like oooohh oooohh ah ah ah aaaahhh. I hope that explains Monkey).

How lovely a relaxing day we were having, sitting on the beach and looking at this fabulous view, but it was now time to head back to camp to get some things done before dark.

We are moving on back to Perth in the morning so we wanted to make sure we had as little to do in the morning as possible.

After a late lunch, we prepared the vegetables for our evening meal. We placed them in our new cast iron camp oven along with the small leg of lamb and some stock. This can sit nicely and marinate until we are ready to put it on the camp fire later this afternoon.

I tidy out the truck, we noticed that there was a funny smell in there; it smelt as if something had crawled in and died. It transpired that the smell came from the carpet where some water had been knocked over onto, so we left all the doors open into the sun so that the carpet dried.

The water had been boiled over the camp fire in the Billycan so we could have a shower, we had 8 litres of water to spare so 4 litres each made for a great shower (actually Andy thinks he only had 2 litres - Ooops!).

Clean again and clean clothes on, we put the camp oven over the fire to cook our evening meal. While this was cooking we took the awning down and folded it ready to pack away in the morning.

We noticed that the Possum was creeping around early this evening, as we were almost the only people here, so we quickly did the remainder of the washing up so that we did not find a Possum sat in the washing up bowl licking the spoons while our back was turned, we also had a carving knife that needed washing and we would both have felt terrible if the Possum had hurt himself on that.

It was now dark, the fire was roaring and the dinner was ready, Andy dished up a healthy lamb casserole into our bowls and we sat by the fire and ate by the light of the fire, wow, this was great. The casserole tasted delicious and I don’t think we had any moths in it either!

We were just enjoying the tranquillity of the evening when guess what? We see a car pull in and a group of kids got out, the car engine was revving the headlights blazing and before long we could hear the snapping of wood from the trees as they were collecting wood for a fire. I had noticed that when the fire was burning they made another fire out of the steel grate.

It is illegal to collect firewood from the natural surroundings you should use the firewood provided by the Ranger. But these kids obviously don’t care.

So once again we are subjected to loud music, swearing, bright light and general bad behaviour when all we want to do is enjoy this environment.

Again this went on well into the night, I was relieved when I heard one of them say “do you want to go to the beach?” bliss I thought, when they all got in the car and drove off, peace reigned. Sadly they had not been gone for long when they came back to the same spot and continued their disruption of the environment.

Our sleep was broken throughout the night, whilst these cretins, shouted and made a racket, but hey ho there you go.

So until tomorrow bloggers

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Photos

What a shower
Caroline's 3rd bush shower in 4 days

Comments

[alibut cheek]

Lamb Roast
G'day you Very Clean Campers! Well, I was thinking about your Lamb Roast, envious and drooling more than a little, because you described it so well. Aren't Camp Kitchens the greatest!? Something we've noticed too - no matter how much red wine you throw in with whatever you are cooking, it's never too much. Why is that? Talking about noisy cretins that don't consider others . . . We experienced the absolute worst once. It was the worst kind of violent domestic argument. Unbelievable!! The 'free' campground was full that night, including dozens of young kids on Scout and Girl Guide campouts . . . and they would have heard the whole thing which went on for hours. So nothing surprises the seasoned camper these days. How sad hey? But Tassie was 'peaceful', wasn't it! Happy travels! Lee & Marilyn