A tumble not a fall!

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Day 89 - Murray Falls

The sun is up, the birds are singing, the sky is blue - beautiful! Quite a few people came in last night but it hasn’t crowded the place at all! We have a nice breakfast and then wander up the boardwalk leading to the base of the falls. They are gorgeous and with the sun beaming brightly from above the water looks so inviting. Sadly in the past it seems that walking on the rocks nearest to the base of the falls has been too inviting and the metal cross indicates a tragedy has taken place here which we later discover to be the death of a 19 year old Dutch tourist in 2003.

We wander back through the camp ground and find the entrance to the walk taking you to the top of the falls. It moderately winds upwards for 930m through rainforest with the birds singing high in the trees above. There are plenty of tiny lizards scampering away from our approaching footsteps and a few birds down at floor level but they’re not easily identifiable with all the ground cover they like to scurry around in! The view from the top of the falls is awesome and stretches right across the valley for miles, gorgeous!

We managed to find a couple of suitable sticks for tonight’s ‘stick bread’ but they weren’t great as walking sticks as I still managed to take a tumble near the bottom! Bit of a cut and bruise on the knee but Dar was a total hero and swept me back up to my feet, all I was worried about was whether I’d damaged the camera! The next 20 minutes was spent dousing it with dettol and cleaning the grit out of the cut with the camp shower! All plastered up we headed down to the lower end of the waterfall for a swim with the snorkels! It was great fun and Dar even managed to traverse three pools in one go by starting at the top and swimming down through the low level rocks (where swimming is allowed) and using the low level waterfalls as a slide! The sun was high in the sky and it made for a lovely relaxing afternoon by the water.

We had a great impromptu visit from a guy who remarked on me holding the camera in readiness for any sort of interesting activity! ‘I have the same disease’ he claimed! Turns out he is a lecturer on digital photography and conducts tag-along tours! We spent a very interesting hour or so with him and are a bit sorry to be heading in the opposite direction of his next tour! His latest is documented on www.goseeaustralia.com.au and it looks great! Anyway, thanks for your time Phil and we hope we’ll somehow bump into you again!

The evening brings a Bolognese cooked on the campfire with accompanying garlic ‘stick bread’ which wasn’t half bad at all! We've nicknamed the stray dog 'Lady' because she is and it's the only name she seems to respond too! Shame really because she must make temporary friends with so many different people and they all up sticks and leave. It's all on her terms though which is how she seems to want it.

Again there were a few late comers to the camp tonight but other than that all was quiet so we hopped into bed pretty early after a few episodes of Phoenix Nights! You can’t beat a bit of Peter Kay can you really!!

Night all

Dar and Sar

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Comments

[Jan Kettle]

Tumble
Oh dear we hope your knee is OK but it looks a great place to camp. Those butterflies are just magnificent aren't they? I think it's called a Ulysses. The unidentified bird could be a forest kingfisher maybe?