Monday 16th
We were booked in to do an Aboriginal Discovery talk this morning at Wentworth Falls at the Conservation Hut and fortunately the weather was not as bad as it has been. It turns out that Ross and I were the only ones on the tour so we had some pretty good one-on-one education! The people running it were Chris Tobin and Janelle Randall-Court who are Aboriginal Discovery Rangers for the Blue Mountains National Park. They were fascinating people to talk to and they knew so much about the Aboriginal Culture (though both having not been brought up in the bush were still learning some of the things!). Ross and I were a little apprehensive at first that it may be a little uncomfortable talking about some of the subjects that may come up but they both soon put us at ease with their easy manner and confidence in themselves.
We went for a bit of a walk down to one of the lookouts and along the way were Janelle showed us all sorts of plants that could be used for medicinal purposes and for “Bush tucker” as well as where to find red ochre for grinding up to use for colouring stuff. When we hit the lookout it was just gorgeous – the clouds were hanging low and they move so fast! We were hanging over the edge and noticed that water droplets from the plants below us were hitting us in the face – they were being blown upwards with the updraft of the wind. There were also a few waterfalls running which Janelle told us normally don’t run but because of all the wet weather they were running.
We wandered back to Katoomba after the tour and found a shoe store with a great sale on so we bought Ross some hiking shoes (something he has needed for quite some time). After that we headed back to the Dairy and did some washing ready to leave in the morning L. We are a little disappointed that we didn’t get to do as much as we wanted while we were here, but we still had a great time. If the weather is okay in the morning we might go and do a small bushwalk, but the weather forecast isn’t looking too promising – we live in hope!
Tuesday 17th
Well, the weather hasn't changed so we packed up and drove down to pick up Boris who was VERY glad to see us! Shannon and her family were just fantastic and spoiled him rotten the whole time and he lapped up every bit of it! We are so glad we left him there instead of a kennel - our minds were much more at ease.
We had left the caravan at the Old Leura Dairy and when we got back up the mountain we went and picked it up and found a place to park for the night on the side of the road just north of Katoomba. The caravan is starting to leak, probably just because it is old and it has been in the wet for the last week so I think we just need to get going and find somewhere dry to camp and dry it out and see if we can find any leaks that need plugging up. If the weather is okay in the morning though we might have one more go at having a look at the Three Sisters.
Wednesday 18th
Well, the weather is exactly the same again this morning so we decided to move on. We headed west towards Bathurst and it finally stopped raining. We found a great spot near the river just east of Bathurst (found it in Camps 4) near Tarana called "Flat Rock". There are a couple of other campers here and they were nice enough to give us some of their firewood to get us going, told us about a big stand of big, fat, juicy blackberries and also gave us some of their garlic prawns they cooked on the barbie!! How nice :).
Ross went to the toilet late at night and it was a really black night. Boris followed him like he always does and after a few minutes I started wandering over there because I had to go too but I didn't take a torch with me (I was kinda just wandering around in the dark hoping I would spot Ross' torch when he came out of the loo). Next thing I could hear Boris yelping off in the bushes somewhere and not having a torch with me couldn't work out what was going on. I started calling him and yelling at poor Ross to get off the loo so we could have some light to work out what was going on. Boris kept yelping and Ross (luckily he had finished) came out of the loo with the light. Boris finally came out of the bushes looking very upset but we couldn't see any marks on him so didn't really know what had happened to him but Ross guessed that he had had a run-in with the electric fence and had the bejeebers scared out of him!! He hasn't gone back over near that fence since so I reckon Ross might have been right! Poor Boris didn't know what hit him! It was also drizzling so the wet probably made it worse.
Thursday 19th
It rained again overnight but it wasn't too bad. I got up and did some work while Ross pottered around.
We went for a lovely swim and a walk and found more lovely juicy blackberries and an apple tree with some nice apples on it - tough life! The boys (Tony the neighbour and Ross) went and took the chainsaw and got a whole bunch of firewood so we could have a good fire tonight. We did a lamb roast with roasted vegies - yum yum!
Friday 20th
We sat out and watched the stars last night - just glorious! We saw a bunch of "shooting stars" does anyone know what they actually are? Tony reckons they are space junk but they move so fast - they cover half the sky in the blink of an eye! (hey that rhymes!).
We saw a snake right next to the path we were all walking on today, it was a brown snake but not sure if it was a normal brown or a king brown. I tried to look up on the internet how to tell the difference but I couldn't really tell.
Today we pottered around doing as little as possible - beautiful day. I cooked a lamb casserole with potato dumplings in the camp oven and we shared it with Tony and Michelle.
Saturday 21st
We went swimming again today, it is just beautiful weather - about 30 degrees - perfect for swimming and sitting in the shade reading.
I cooked a bacon and cheese damper in the camp oven and we did jaffles with the left over lamb roast from the other night.
It was a lovely night and we sat around the campfire trading stories.
Boris is such a tart. A bunch of different families turned up to go swimming down at the river and he goes up to every one of them and offers to accompany them down to the river and go for a swim with them. Him being so charming and all they don't mind in the least and always promise to bring him back when they come back. Some other campers also set up camp nearby and he felt obliged to spend some time letting them scratch his back - very considerate of him!
Sunday 22nd
We are packing up to move on this morning. We will head into Bathurst to do some shopping and then find somewhere else to stay tonight.
We said goodbye to Tony and Nicole, we got on really well with them and hope we meet up with them somewhere else along the line. They have a 9-week-old baby with them (baby Toni), who has been on the road with them since she was born. They look like they don't have two pennies to rub together as they are travelling in a really old Land Rover Defender with tents, but I reckon either one of them would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. They have a great attitude to life and I learned a lot from them.
We headed through Bathurst after shopping and through Blayney and came to a camp site on Carcour Dam - it's a pretty popular spot and we found a nice place to park the caravan. There are cold showers and toilets here so we reckon we might stay a couple of days. We might even do some fishing in the dam - we'll get the boat off the roof and have a potter around. The dam is pretty low on water but we will give it a go anyway.
We found a group of travellers having "Happy Hour" so we invited ourselves and some others along and had a nice chat to all the campers for an hour or two before heading off to have dinner.
There are wind turbines up on the hill near hear and when it gets windy you can hear them in the background. They are probably about a kilometre away.
We were booked in to do an Aboriginal Discovery talk this morning at Wentworth Falls at the Conservation Hut and fortunately the weather was not as bad as it has been. It turns out that Ross and I were the only ones on the tour so we had some pretty good one-on-one education! The people running it were Chris Tobin and Janelle Randall-Court who are Aboriginal Discovery Rangers for the Blue Mountains National Park. They were fascinating people to talk to and they knew so much about the Aboriginal Culture (though both having not been brought up in the bush were still learning some of the things!). Ross and I were a little apprehensive at first that it may be a little uncomfortable talking about some of the subjects that may come up but they both soon put us at ease with their easy manner and confidence in themselves.
We went for a bit of a walk down to one of the lookouts and along the way were Janelle showed us all sorts of plants that could be used for medicinal purposes and for “Bush tucker” as well as where to find red ochre for grinding up to use for colouring stuff. When we hit the lookout it was just gorgeous – the clouds were hanging low and they move so fast! We were hanging over the edge and noticed that water droplets from the plants below us were hitting us in the face – they were being blown upwards with the updraft of the wind. There were also a few waterfalls running which Janelle told us normally don’t run but because of all the wet weather they were running.
We wandered back to Katoomba after the tour and found a shoe store with a great sale on so we bought Ross some hiking shoes (something he has needed for quite some time). After that we headed back to the Dairy and did some washing ready to leave in the morning L. We are a little disappointed that we didn’t get to do as much as we wanted while we were here, but we still had a great time. If the weather is okay in the morning we might go and do a small bushwalk, but the weather forecast isn’t looking too promising – we live in hope!
Tuesday 17th
Well, the weather hasn't changed so we packed up and drove down to pick up Boris who was VERY glad to see us! Shannon and her family were just fantastic and spoiled him rotten the whole time and he lapped up every bit of it! We are so glad we left him there instead of a kennel - our minds were much more at ease.
We had left the caravan at the Old Leura Dairy and when we got back up the mountain we went and picked it up and found a place to park for the night on the side of the road just north of Katoomba. The caravan is starting to leak, probably just because it is old and it has been in the wet for the last week so I think we just need to get going and find somewhere dry to camp and dry it out and see if we can find any leaks that need plugging up. If the weather is okay in the morning though we might have one more go at having a look at the Three Sisters.
Wednesday 18th
Well, the weather is exactly the same again this morning so we decided to move on. We headed west towards Bathurst and it finally stopped raining. We found a great spot near the river just east of Bathurst (found it in Camps 4) near Tarana called "Flat Rock". There are a couple of other campers here and they were nice enough to give us some of their firewood to get us going, told us about a big stand of big, fat, juicy blackberries and also gave us some of their garlic prawns they cooked on the barbie!! How nice :).
Ross went to the toilet late at night and it was a really black night. Boris followed him like he always does and after a few minutes I started wandering over there because I had to go too but I didn't take a torch with me (I was kinda just wandering around in the dark hoping I would spot Ross' torch when he came out of the loo). Next thing I could hear Boris yelping off in the bushes somewhere and not having a torch with me couldn't work out what was going on. I started calling him and yelling at poor Ross to get off the loo so we could have some light to work out what was going on. Boris kept yelping and Ross (luckily he had finished) came out of the loo with the light. Boris finally came out of the bushes looking very upset but we couldn't see any marks on him so didn't really know what had happened to him but Ross guessed that he had had a run-in with the electric fence and had the bejeebers scared out of him!! He hasn't gone back over near that fence since so I reckon Ross might have been right! Poor Boris didn't know what hit him! It was also drizzling so the wet probably made it worse.
Thursday 19th
It rained again overnight but it wasn't too bad. I got up and did some work while Ross pottered around.
We went for a lovely swim and a walk and found more lovely juicy blackberries and an apple tree with some nice apples on it - tough life! The boys (Tony the neighbour and Ross) went and took the chainsaw and got a whole bunch of firewood so we could have a good fire tonight. We did a lamb roast with roasted vegies - yum yum!
Friday 20th
We sat out and watched the stars last night - just glorious! We saw a bunch of "shooting stars" does anyone know what they actually are? Tony reckons they are space junk but they move so fast - they cover half the sky in the blink of an eye! (hey that rhymes!).
We saw a snake right next to the path we were all walking on today, it was a brown snake but not sure if it was a normal brown or a king brown. I tried to look up on the internet how to tell the difference but I couldn't really tell.
Today we pottered around doing as little as possible - beautiful day. I cooked a lamb casserole with potato dumplings in the camp oven and we shared it with Tony and Michelle.
Saturday 21st
We went swimming again today, it is just beautiful weather - about 30 degrees - perfect for swimming and sitting in the shade reading.
I cooked a bacon and cheese damper in the camp oven and we did jaffles with the left over lamb roast from the other night.
It was a lovely night and we sat around the campfire trading stories.
Boris is such a tart. A bunch of different families turned up to go swimming down at the river and he goes up to every one of them and offers to accompany them down to the river and go for a swim with them. Him being so charming and all they don't mind in the least and always promise to bring him back when they come back. Some other campers also set up camp nearby and he felt obliged to spend some time letting them scratch his back - very considerate of him!
Sunday 22nd
We are packing up to move on this morning. We will head into Bathurst to do some shopping and then find somewhere else to stay tonight.
We said goodbye to Tony and Nicole, we got on really well with them and hope we meet up with them somewhere else along the line. They have a 9-week-old baby with them (baby Toni), who has been on the road with them since she was born. They look like they don't have two pennies to rub together as they are travelling in a really old Land Rover Defender with tents, but I reckon either one of them would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. They have a great attitude to life and I learned a lot from them.
We headed through Bathurst after shopping and through Blayney and came to a camp site on Carcour Dam - it's a pretty popular spot and we found a nice place to park the caravan. There are cold showers and toilets here so we reckon we might stay a couple of days. We might even do some fishing in the dam - we'll get the boat off the roof and have a potter around. The dam is pretty low on water but we will give it a go anyway.
We found a group of travellers having "Happy Hour" so we invited ourselves and some others along and had a nice chat to all the campers for an hour or two before heading off to have dinner.
There are wind turbines up on the hill near hear and when it gets windy you can hear them in the background. They are probably about a kilometre away.
2 comments:
Hi Ross and Lisa
life in port is very wet . lake road is flooded and closed off, had to take the long way round to get home , Ha Ha . Rangie Hasnt drowned yet.
Hope all is going well for you two. Love reading your Blogg.
Peter
Hey Peter, wow, I don't think I ever remember Lake Road actually being closed off before, I know sometimes it gets a lot of water over it but don't remember it being closed off - must be a fair bit of rain up there! We had a lot of rain in the Blue Mountains unfortunately and the caravan got a tad damp inside but nothing we can't handle. We have found a great spot here near Bathurst and are going to stay put for a couple of days!
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