Snnnaaakkeee!

We got up and headed for the beach to check it out. There wasn’t very many people, but the further south we go the more colder it gets. Although I wouldn’t say that its cold compared to New Zealand, but the temperature is definitely dropping to under 25 degrees. Esmee had a play in the sand and we all sat on a log to enjoy the view. After 15 minutes or so it was back in the car and into the bush.

We drove for most of the day, passing Coffs Harbour, and ended up at a council campground called Platypus Flat, which runs along a river. We had to drive along a 15km dirt track to get there and came across cattle grazing along the road side. There was a few babies on the road that ran to mum before moving completely off the road. Platypus are most likely seen at dawn or dusk but most Australians themselves have never actually seen one in the wild. We arrived there just before dark so dad and I quickly made chicken burgers for dinner while Camiel and Esmee started setting up a campfire for marshmallows later on. Once it was dark we lit up the fire and had marshmallows, burning most of them by accident! We heard all sorts of wildlife. Once the sun disappears its like another world comes out. The wildlife here are much louder in the dark than during the day. We could hear ducks, cicadas, frogs and even paddies (small wallabies) jumping through the night. The sky was clear because there was no surrounding city light, and we saw heaps of bright and clear stars. Mum and I heard something rumble through the bush behind us. We shined the torch upon a bandicoot. We followed it as it started to run back into the bush, but lost it shortly afterwards. We waited for the fire to die out which took a good hour and then went to bed because it was pitch black. It was a freezing cold night - coldest yet! I even slept with my jumper on. 


The next thing that happened was mum shaking my tent waking me up at 6.15am and whispering ‘Do you want to see a snake?!’. I stumbled out of the tent and into the bright early morning sun light. The grass was wet, so I put on my shoes and followed mum to where Camiel was standing, 20 metres away from our camp site. There was a big huge snake curled up just by the waters edge. Mum explained to me how she nearly stood on it and got the biggest fright of her life - fair enough. We decided it was a python, and after asking mum and Camiel if they spotted any platypus’s and them responding with ‘no but we saw turtles’, I headed back to my tent and went back to sleep for another two hours. I grabbed Camiel’s blanket as well as mine because I was freezing cold.


Carpet Python!

After breakfast we headed for some more waterfalls (one being the second tallest in NSW), and some look outs. When we left the campground we spotted a dingo walking along the road! We then arrived at a walk in Cathedral Rock National Park. It was a 2 and a half hour walk, which at first we (being the kids) thought it was going to be long and boring and hard. But it was one of the most fun walks I’ve actually been on! After 2.5km of walking through the bush, there was a 400m side track to a lookout. The description read that you have to ‘scramble‘ your way to the top of Cathedral Rock. The walk consisted of huge boulders piled on top of each other making magnificent structures. We set off on the 400m side track, not realising what we were getting ourselves into. The word ‘scramble‘ was far from what we had to do. We had to jump, leap, climb up vertical rocks, and even use chains to get up to the top. It was a long way up, and we even had to go under some huge boulders which freaks me out because I would not want to be squashed under one of those things. Boulder’s weigh twice as much as water, and water alone is rather heavy. Once we got the top the view was beautiful. You could see far and wide in all directions, and spot more huge boulders. There was a thunderstorm in the distance that we could see and hear, so we decided we better get moving before it caught up on us. It began spitting on our way back, which would later turn into rain. Esmee was scared of the thunder, but we kept pacing on because we didn’t want to be in there when it started pelting down. All the animals began to disappear. Animals have the most amazing natural instincts! The climb up to the rocks was a once in a lifetime kind of walk, one that we have never done.




Climbing up


The top of Cathedral Rock



Waterfall


Ant hill!

We drove for another 250km to a town called Gloucester but started getting an empty tank of petrol some part of the way through. We stopped at McD for some dinner which we had been greatly craving since our walk, and settled into a motel because we didn’t want to set up camp in the rain. Sydney tomorrow?

I hope people are still reading this?!
Fem
xox