Favourite Water Hole

 

Friday 4 June 2021 –

The entire campground was awoken just before 6am by one of the local residents deciding to give us a loud rendition of his finest squawking.  Therefore, as we were all awake at the same time, there was a queue for the toilets!  We all just stared out our feet as no one was quite ready for pleasantries at that time of the morning and in that state of dishevelledness.

As it was a non-moving day, Larry was set to cook up the customary bacon and eggs but a lack of foresight meant that there was no defrosted bacon so Jenny moved to Plan B which was a bottle of pancake mix stashed away in the pantry and cooked up on the barbie and served with golden syrup (the pantry isn’t quite large enough to stretch to maple syrup!) they were absolutely delicious and Larry’s tummy was consoled.

As Larry quickly had the sliding drawer of the pull-out sorted this morning (it had involved much swearing and grumpiness at dinner time last night as it had refused point blank to be fixed) we were able to leave camp about 8.30am and head out on the road to St John’s Gorge.  On the way we turned off and headed down to Bluebush Wetlands for a bit of bird spotting.  This was a new experience for us at Mornington as this wetland was not wet land at all when we were here in 2019.  Now there is a huge lake and the bird hides built for normal seasons are out in the middle and inaccessible so we stood on the edge and gazed across the water which was filled with pretty purple water lilies with only a few water birds to be seen.  We stood there quietly for about 10 minutes before we got bored but noticed one lady in full camouflage armed with camera with enormous telephoto lens who looked like she was prepared to put in the hard yards waiting for some good shots and thought she was probably waiting for us to bugger off in our colourful clothes so the birds came and posed for her shots.

Back to the car and drove on to Sir John Gorge.  This place had been the highlight of our 2019 holiday and I couldn’t help but feel that we might be let down as it wouldn’t be as good as we remembered particularly as there are a lot more people around this time.  It was, however, remarkably quiet there and we even set up camp in the same position as last time and pretty much recreated the last visit except that this time Larry’s hat was blue instead of red and we didn’t have any barbeque shapes with us.  It wasn’t quite as completely still and quiet as last time either as this time there was the distinct sound of running water over rapids up around the bend.  It was still blissful though as we just sat and stared at the scenery and into the calm, clear water where there were plenty of fish darting around.  Jenny remarked that it was a pity we didn’t have a line with us to drop in and Larry quickly reminded her that that would probably be frowned upon given we are in the middle of a Wildlife Sanctuary!

We stayed there until our stomachs started growling and that forced us back to the car.  We ate some fruit on the drive back to Bluebush (not to be confused with Bluebush Wetlands) which we remembered from last time as having a lovely sandy riverbank with shady trees and therefore a nice place to have our picnic lunch and then another swim if we got too hot.  Another partly cloudy day and a maximum of about 32 degrees so after eating our delicious ham, cheese and salad sandwiches (really, everything just tastes so much better when you are on holiday) we fell back into the water for another swim.  We actually had to swim this time as we had left the pool noodles in the car but L soon decided swimming was really just a bit too much effort and retrieved the noodles so we could float down stream and over a shallow, fast flowing section in relative comfort.

When we had started to go pruney and felt we had had enough sun we headed back to camp.  We had managed to make our swimming gear pretty grubby climbing in and out of the water over the last couple of days so, after a quick shower, Jenny took the swimming stuff up to the trough at the ablution block and swooshed and swirled some soapy water through them until the water was dark brown and the clothes were less brown.  Meanwhile Larry sat on his arse back at camp downloading pictures off the dash cam, go-pro, phones, resizing some for the blog and called that ‘work’.

Of course, because Jenny had done some washing, it clouded right over and we then heard drops of rain on the awning but, no fear, a few fat drops was the size of it and they pretty much evaporated as soon as they landed due to the heat so the washing still dried easily.  The overcast conditions gave a different feel to the day and it could almost have felt menacing except that the birds were still chattering away as per normal.  One felt that if anything bad was going to happen they would change their behaviour accordingly.  Funny how you become more atuned to these things when you are living in the environment and not inside reading about it on a screen.

Larry tried his newest invention, a plastic box with a water pump inside powered by the van via an anderson plug to draw water from a jerry can into the van tanks. The result, it worked a treat so no more balancing water jerry cans and slopping water on ourselves.

We whiled the afternoon away and found it just that bit more enjoyable to sit experiencing the great outdoors with a little drinkie or two.  Eventually thought we should get dinner sorted and the great dinner creation of 2021 evolved.  A bit of leftover boiled rice from last night, a couple of sliced up leftover cooked sausages, some bacon, onion, frozen peas and corn, chopped up scrambled egg, soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce and Kimberley Fried Rice was born (patent pending).

It certainly made a small amount of left over boiled rice go a long away and my mother would be proud of my economical ways and it was ‘very tasty Mrs Titmuss’ too. Larry also partook in a couple of mugs of Jim’s moonshine (liquid fruitcake) which went down a treat.

 It was a lovely evening with a cool breeze blowing so we sat outside the van for quite a while until it was time to head inside to do the blog etc (no way you can do it outside as the bugs go crazy around the bright light of the screen). Fans on tonight as we don’t care how low the batteries go as we will charge them up by the car on the way to Mt Elizabeth tomorrow.