25 June - Afternoon- Lennard River

2011.06.30

Alan's camping set up. Annotated.

Sulpher-crested cockatoos. There was a big flock here at the river.

The Lennard River bridge and my campsite overlooking the deep part. The nights must still be cold as i' seem to have the tent fly in the tent with me for extra warmth.

The shallow part of the river.

My washing overlooking the deep part.

View of the deep part from the bridge. You can see my camp in annotation.

Fishing.

Dinner to be.

A modest haul but good for entree.

Part 2
[I'm now on the Gibb River Road. The famous GRR. Famous for its gorges, rough road and remoteness. This is the top left corner of Australia. The permanent population is very low. The tourist population is quite high and almost all of them are travelling on this road.]

12pm: Lunch at Lennard River Campsite
I'm camped Just after the turn off onto the gibb river road. An old guy I met in passing yesterday was camped here already. He was keen to chat and offered me tea. Later, a beer.

Lunch was:
Home made baked beans in tomato sauce with packet taco powder
This turned out well in the end.

Then bread - my first attempt this trip.
I mixed up a batch of dumpling damper. [I did that last night or this morning.]
Today I added some milk powder and instead of boiling it as usual, I put it on the enamel plate I'd bought in Fitzroy Crossing, and put the billy on top of it upside down to make an oven. It cooked well and quickly in less than 15 minutes. The bottom burnt so I need to find a way to deal with that. Maybe I should not put the plate directly on the coals.

Then two cups of tea with the old man, Alan. His son turned up later, Les, in his 40s ex army. So now I’ve been invited for dinner. Watching them sipping their beers, I couldn’t resist but had to ask for one, so now we are arguing about money. I am trying to pay him and Les is refusing to take it.

I had a swim in the shallow part of the river. The old guy had told me there were no crocs but I still wasn’t keen to swim in the deep part. I rinsed out all my clothes and that’s it. Apparently, from the high bank on the side of the river, Alan had watched a young guy, who didn’t know any better, go snorkelling in the deep part and he could assert that there was "nothing there" bigger than a small fish.

7pm: Dinner at Lennard River campsite
3 little perch that les caught.
1 delicious piece of porterhouse steak
3 sausages with tomato sauce
Little bit of spaghetti w oil
Half a cup of port
1 cup nescafe

Les and Alan invited me for dinner. Its a bit shocking how they eat so much meat and nothing else. - no fruit, no vegies. Not even can of beans. And its shocking how much meat I ate. The spaghetti was my contribution.

Les caught the fish after a couple of hours of enthusiastic fishing off the rocks. … He just walked past me right now with a spear. A veritable hunter! He’s been down trying to catch a cherubin (yabbie/prawn thing). They’ve got some traps set but its not looking promising. We saw the cherubins by the light of a torch. But they weren’t in the traps.

Les is an ex-army guy SAS sniper. But he’s ok! Easy going. Friendly.

So we had a good fire and sat around it for quite a while doing dinner and eating it. Alan drank a lot of beer. But it only made him fall asleep. He’s not a very healthy chappy. High blood pressure, won’t take his pills and given all the meat we ate tonight and the booze he drank all afternoon, well, I don’t think he will go on for too long really.

Just before bed, I crossed over the road to the bush loo. I had gone there in the daylight so without thinking anything about it, I figured I knew where I was going. But I got lost in the dark and for a minute there I thought I could end up completely lost and stuck there for the whole night. My choices at one point seemed to be keep on wandering around like a blind person and risk ending up far from anywhere or don’t move and stay for the night which would have been cold and very uncomfortable. I only had my tiny torch which didn’t throw the light far enough to orientate myself but I couldn’t come at sleeping on the prickly plants. Eventually I found a fence and fortunately chose the right way to turn - back towards the road.