Advertisement
Published: July 21st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Day 85 - Alligator Creek, Bowling Green Bay National Park
Get up, get up, get up! It’s 6.15am but we’ve beaten the dawn chorus, just. About 5 minutes later the raucous, high pitched, fevered, manic laughter rang from the trees above us! The Laughing Kookaburra has a beautiful laughing voice but the Blue Winged Kookaburra, well, psycho manic springs to mind! The next time we hear it we’ll record it for you all to enjoy!
It’s a big walk today, hence us being up early again. The warmer days are tough for walking so we’re easing ourselves in! By 7.15am we’re off and running, not literally you understand, and we have our swimming gear on in case there’s a chance for a swim. Before we’ve even come off the boardwalk going past Alligator Creek we’ve spied our first surprised wildlife. We think they are either Agile or Rock Wallabies but we’re not sure which! The one was very timid and disappeared immediately but the other did sit reasonably still for a photo shoot!
The next section of the walk takes us to Cockatoo Creek where we were yesterday but after that it’s all new territory. We come across
plenty of fresh looking horse poo, maybe there are Brumbies out here? If there are they are keeping well hidden and out of our eye and ear shot! The track is very dusty in parts, rugged in others and we cross through a small meadow where we’re systematically eaten alive by bloody mosquitoes! Arrggggggg! The Aeroguard spray comes out and we kill a few of them while we cover ourselves in the protection! There are six creek crossings in all and Cockatoo Creek proves to be the easiest and shallowest of the lot! Dar shows great patience as he coaxes me over the others although he does let out little gasps of giggles and exasperation watching me wobble around on the rocks. There are of course no photos of this because I have burned them all, it’s my right as editor!
We’re overtaken by a young tri-athlete, or at least that’s what it says on his t-shirt! He jogs energetically by us but it’s not long before Dar spots him coming back towards us, he said he didn’t make it for a swim as he was too tired!
The walk is 17km return but of course it’s up
hill for the first 3km then levels out to then finish with a nice scramble up rocks for about another 2km! Then you reach the Alligator Falls! We’ve been told that the 2nd rock pool up is the best one for swimming but it’s hard work to try and figure out the way to get to it! There are yellow arrows in some places and then there are pink ribbons or yellow ribbons tied to trees so we presume they are the ones to follow. We find the first swimming hole and then scramble up more rocks to find the 2nd. Both of them have clear water and the falls are beautiful the way they cascade down like a display in a hotel lobby! We sit and watch for a while, decide not to swim and then work out how to take a photo of both of us! This is always a riot, especially when there’s rock climbing involved! With that done, Dar goes off for a while to see how far up the waterfall he can get, not very far at all despite the effort he put in! The intrepid reporter comes back with this statement “The rock is
quite sheer and slippery but I got a good view of the swimming hole from the other side where the water’s really clear and it’s like being on a beach”, Darryl Howells, Alligator Falls!
We head back as the weather is getting warmer and the walk is just as hard despite being a bit more downhill. It’s not far down the track before Dar stops dead and starts walking backwards, a thin, quick as you like black snake was in the track right in front of us. He was off like a shot and way too quick for a photograph. We must have been walking so quietly that he didn’t sense the vibrations of us coming along the track. We saw another one sunning itself on a long stem of grass further along too! There were heaps of small lizards and loads of birds and butterflies, even the stunning Ulysse butterfly but that’s always too quick for me and the camera!
We went a bit off course at one point because the signage was misleading, well there is none so you have to guess and we guessed wrong! We wandered along a track for a short while, it
was very up and down and we noticed there were no other footprints so we turned around and went back to the fork in the track figuring we’d taken the wrong one. We found our way and crossed the penultimate creek with style and enthusiasm! It was really warm now and we were puffing a bit but we continued on to Cockatoo Creek where a couple of rocks made a welcome resting point!
We’d made it! A couple of ice lollies were our prize and then a swim in the creek. The water was cold but definitely warmer than Finch Hatton pools! We took M&D’s snorkel masks down with us so we could see what we were swimming with this time and found loads of fish and a big eel! Taking the swimming pics were a bit more of a challenge, there was nobody around to ask so we used the self timer but it meant I had to go in and out of the water to do it! The first couple weren’t so good, you could see Darryl but you couldn’t really see me!! We got it right in the end though! It’s a great camp spot and
a fab place for a picnic, where the water is lovely, clear and even warm in places!
Back to camp we go and as Darryl was preparing dinner outside the caravan we were surrounded by scrub turkeys who decided to steal a whole corn on the cob from our rubbish bin! The cheeky little blighters! Then a Blue Winged Kookaburra caught a cricket and started to whack it to death on the branch of a tree!
Another great day, shame we can’t have a fire tonight but we have found a power point to charge the laptop with which is useful and apparently the showers here should be hot because they’re solar powered so we might give that a go in the morning and then I can dry my hair using the power point! It’s a very upmarket National Park site this!
With the place in darkness we dig out a Bourne film and settle in for the night!
Night everyone
Dar and Sar
Advertisement
Tot: 0.482s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 20; qc: 127; dbt: 0.1867s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Jan Kettle
non-member comment
All things Aussie
We wondered when you'd come across some lovely creepy crawlies! Have you had preying mantis coming at you from all angles yet - they're lovely(!), although what that kookaburra is about to eat looks pretty big!