Finally, a morning to sleep in a bit....

2008-09-16 - Tuesday

Finally, a morning to sleep in a bit....unfortunately, our campsite was flanked on both sides by two huge groups of school children out on their own camping adventure. Luckily, I have ear plugs (thanks Joe) and am not afraid to use them!

Despite children playing basketball at the break of dawn, I was able to sleep in to about 8am.

We do have a bit of a routine when it comes to meals so far. Breakfast has been consiting of your choice of Corn Flakes or Sultan Flakes (which are really raisin bran with bigger raisins in it); and tea or coffee if you so wish. For lunches, it's been primarily make-it-yourself sandwiches of lettuce, tomato, ham, salami, cucumber, etc. Pretty tasty and definitlely provides the energy needed for the hikes we've been doing.

Suppers are a different story. These we take time to prepare and enjoy. Since we basically have a new group, our menu has begun a new...so I'll try to make it a point to share with you what it is each evening. But basically, except for tonight's, suppers are prepared by groups of 4 who are responsible for both meal preparation and clean up.

So, after breakfast and breaking camp, it was off to Ormiston Gorge and Pound for most challenging hike yet.

This hike, approximately 6km in length was the most challenging yet, by far.

The hike, called the Ormiston Pound Walk " took us up along the Gorges side, then down on to a dry riverbed, which supported a couple of permanent water holes. The largest waterhole was surrounded by sand and looked to have at least a couple of permanent residents: a couple of little ducks and a wallabee. The walk along the riverbed changed from sand to larger bolders. To be honest, this micro-landscape were much more reminiscent of rocky beaches back home...not the middle of the desert in Australia.

After about an half hour of boulder hopping, we were back to sand and then to rock chips as we completed the 3 hour circuit back to our camp site.

Once back at the campsite, all partook in some refreshing "cold ones" before moving on to a couple of silly "get to know everyone" games.

After a couple of rounds of these games it was time to prepare supper.

For tonight, Cesar Salad, Mashed Potatoes and Kangaroo Steak...hmmmm, good!

After supper and clean up, we all gathered around the fire for some more storytelling and trying our hand at Didgeridoo playing.

Finally, influenced by our new participants, who have been sleeping under the stars in the "swags" for their last trek, we chose to camp sans tents tonight, and instead just setup our groundsheets and sleeping bags for a night under the stars.