We are on holiday!

Thursday 8th September 2022

It rained sporadically and the wind seemed to pull at the tent all night, but it must have stopped at some point as we woke to a still, calm morning. What a relief, I half expected the tent to be partly collapsed in the morning. Thank goodness we are protected by vegetation around us! Richie had snuck out early and cooked crepes for breakfast – testing out some new crepe pans from Perth, since our Scanpan is showing signs of abuse!

To take proper advantage of the drop in wind we decided to take a walk up Mount Barren, which overlooks the campground. On the way we stopped at Barrens Lookout. A beautiful spot with a diversity of proteaceae, mostly finished flowering but it must have looked amazing a month or two ago! Lots of different orchids, many not yet flowering. And Bonnie spotted a beautiful python, probably feeling a bit sluggish in the cool weather!

We headed on to the Mount Brenner walk, a 2.6 km walk (supposedly, though it felt longer!). The track headed up, quite steeply, along quartz ridges, and along the saddle to eventually reach a peak and lookout. Once again loads of banksias and hakeas that were done flowering, but so much colour from Calothamnus, Melaleuca, peas and many other things I don’t know! We bumped into the man who is camping next to us, who is really into banksia and looking at the endemic species there.

We had a picnic lunch in a little cave at the top, and enjoyed a rest before the dreaded trip down! It wasn’t long before Otis was in his usual seat on Richie’s shoulders, galloping down the hill. I walked with Bonnie, who once again did a champion job and cheerfully walked down the steep, rocky track. I picked my way down carefully, with aching knees by the time we reached the bottom and memories of Mount Sonder in the West MacDonnell Ranges – the walk that killed my knees in 2014. 😥

Partway down Bonnie found a tiny chick that was not in it’s nest, peeping loudly. To Bonnie this was all her dreams come true, she has always wanted to find a baby bird that she could raise herself! If we were at home I would have been happy for that to happen, but not quite practical when you are on the road!! We watched for a while to try spot a parent bird, then Bonnie held it while we consulted Tonya on what to do. Tonya identified it as a Quail, meaning it had a ground nest and was probably looking for it’s mother who was looking for food. While she did provide us with some excellent care advice, the practicalities of keeping a bird in a car didn’t seem easy, and the mother bird was likely to find it anyway. Bonnie gave little Fern a last cuddle and it was returned to the ground, hopefully for it’s mother to find, rather than a snake or bird of prey!

We felt a bit worn out after the walk – Richie after carrying Otis all the way down the hill, and me with my dodgy knees. We decided to drive on a little further to check out the coastline, and had a look at Cave Point, a short walk to a lookout over the ocean. Then we headed back to four mile camp for a rest and coffee.

With the afternoon remaining calm, Bonnie and Richie went to the beach to try some fishing. Otis and I stayed at camp to play cars and cook dinner. We caught up with our camp neighbour who had gone on to do another hike after Mount Barren! He had been waiting days for the wind and rain to clear so was trying to get in as much as possible! He also showed some of his work – beautiful wood/Perspex boards set with arrangements of native seed pods – that explained the Banksia obsession! Along with some of the crazy eucalypt fruit here, he has some great material to work with, and has a great knowledge of the local flora!

I shared the camp kitchen with a really lovely cheerful group of campers – a total contrast to last night where it seemed no one could grunt more than single words! The mood picked up further when Bonnie and Richie returned with two trevally and a Tommy – Bonnie had had an amazing time, and the ocean was a much calmer place, with reefs and lovely rock pools clearly visible this time ! I cooked up one trevally for Bonnie to eat straight away, while the rest of us had Morrocan chicken to eat – Bon was much happier with her fish! 😂

I got the kids to bed, while Richie stayed behind to wash up. He had quite the wait given the group in the kitchen, but then they stayed to chat and all washed and dried everyone’s dishes together, which is such a lovely thing to do! I crept back out and waited in a queue to use the one shower, which was lovely and hot. Surprising, given half the caravan parks we’ve stayed at on this trip couldn’t manage a hot shower by 9:30 at night!