Day 9 – Friday 5th

I am writing this sitting under the awning with my feet up surrounded by green grass, lots of trees with the sound of birds all around me, a slight breeze blowing and some blue sky, lovely.

Both had a good night sleep, I still had to sit up, getting good a sleeping sitting up, nice to lie down one day. We watched DVD’s last night with the sound right up due to the rain and had the heater on drying out some bits. Found out the neighbours did the same. We are really happy with the new table a chair arrangement, so much more comfortable.

The weather today is much better, rain has cleared and there is some blue sky. The road out is closed, that’s out of the park as well, some tape has been put up to stop any one from trying to cross the creek coming into the park. Apparently last night it really came up, the police have blocked the road coming into Carnarvon as well. We have just heard the first creek we crossed coming in yesterday had 2m of water going over it early this morning. The police will re look at it tomorrow and decided if they will open the road. We are realising how lucky we were to get in, if we didn’t when we did it would have been a t least 2 days before we could and would have blown the money for those 2 days. There are several people here who had planned to leave today but can’t, they keep checking the water level. Seems they have a free night though. All quiet dramatic. They won’t even let us drive down to the national park, which is 4km down the road, due to the creek crossing coming into the van park. We could easily get out in the Jack as can anyone else in a 4wd but it’s the standard cars that would try it.

Crossing-coming-into-park

We went for a walk earlier and followed the roaring creek around, got some bird shots, before my battery went flat. Came back for lunch and just haven’t got out there, just enjoying the rest, doing some of that relaxing stuff. Not much else we can do until they let us out. But gee we will be ready to get into it when we can. We will have to leave some of the longer walks a few days to give the creek a chance to go down, on the 21km walk the creek crosses the track 22 times. Everyone in the park is just wondering around calling in on each other and having a chat.

The van park is quiet nice, a bush setting with sites pretty spacious. The phone gobbles up the money, the washing is $5 a load as you have to use their special washing powder. The camp kitchens are really big and well set up. Bread here is in a freezer and is $3.50 a loaf, the place is a bit expensive at $35 for a powered site a night but there isn’t any other place to say.

We ended up having a quick walk around the park and taking some photos of the Kangaroos and I hand fed an Apostle Bird some salted Cashews (opps). The Apostle Birds, Happy Jacks or CWA birds are funny things. One got on the car mirrors and looked at itself, tapping the mirror and making this crooning noise to itself, like it was trying to chat up the bird in the mirror, very funny.

Tonight the Rangers put on a slide show in the park, they do that every Tue and Friday, you take up your chairs and jackets etc and sit outside and watch the slides as they do a talk about Carnarvon Gorge etc, really interesting. Then we came back and gathered around the communal fireplace and chatted with a few of the other campers, a very pleasant night.