We are on holiday!

Tuesday 26th July 2022

We woke to another amazing dawn chorus, after waking several times in the nights to the screams of the curlews. Aah, the sounds of the north! We put some more washing on, after realising last night that it isn’t the stubborn desert dust staining our clothes, but rather the completely ineffective, coin guzzling commercial Maytag washing machines that occupy the campgrounds and apparently don’t do anything. The free to use, domestic machine here produced perfectly clean clothes! It might be our last chance in a while to actually wash clothes!

We had organised to meet Andrew at the Sandy Creek Falls water crossing at 10, so he could ferry us across to meet up with the family! We piled in with our lunch and swimming gear, and met Tegan and the kids at the campground. We were relieved to hear that our campsite, that we hadn’t been able to use, had been by used by another couple, whose booked site was occupied by someone else!

We all set off on the walk to Sandy creek Falls, a 3.4km return walk with falls and a waterhole at the end. The rocky path sparkled so prettily in the sunshine that Bonnie naturally assumed it must be a trail of fairy dust, and chatted about her possible fairy encounters we would surely have along the way! We saw lovely wildflowers on the track. Some familiar, but others I have no idea, I feel botanically out of my depth here!

Parts of the walk had recently been burnt – in fact huge stretches of land that we have driven through the last few days have been burnt. They obviously have a very extensive burning program up here!

We were pretty happy to arrive at the waterhole and out of the heat, what a relief! The falls are beautiful, and given the isolation – 4WD access and a reasonable walk, was very quiet. Only a few others were there, which was lovely compared to Wangi Falls which was teeming with people! The water was cold getting in – Otis initially totally refused, and only came in when I tried to head off for a swim without him! 😁 We snorkeled again, seeing lots of rainbow fish – which with the sun shining in them look absolutely amazing! Also lots of sooty grunters. Snorkeling under the waterfall itself was amazing – the rock wall is striped with different colours of rock and algae – really striking!

We didn’t stay in too long due to the cold, and had a picnic lunch on the rocks. We carried in our leftover chicken curry and heated it on the dragonfly – a real treat after a cold swim! Bonnie, Rufus and Genevieve all wanted another swim, so Richie and Andrew took them back in while Tegan and I stayed warm and dry! Then we set off on the walk back – Richie galloped off with the backpacks and Otis, while Bonnie and I meandered along, looking for materials for the next craft project she has in mind!

Once back at the campsite, Richie and Andrew headed off to the Reynolds River to try bag the elusive barra. The rest of us stayed at camp, feeling pretty tired from the big walk and swim. The kids played, drew pictures, read books then watched Lego building videos! 😆 The boys returned after a couple of hours with no barra, but a couple of sooty grunters for dinner. Andrew took us back to our car across the water crossing and we headed back to our camp for fish dinner!