The bed was probably one of the most comfortable I have
slept in away from home, we awoke to the sounds of birds singing and Corella’s
screeching – gotta love them. Breakfast was part of the accommodation deal, so
at 7.30 we went down to the restaurant. I was very excited to find fresh fruit
salad. The breakfast was lovely, starting with continental then bacon,
scrambled eggs and mushrooms.
We thought that another day paddling a gorge was in order, we
booked a canoe for one of the other gorges, there were not very many people
staying at the centre so we knew it would be another quiet day. We went back to
the tent to get ourselves ready, when we booked in we had been told that there
were snakes about, particularly a Mulga snake had been seen in the vicinity of
our tent in the last couple of weeks. Iain was at the car and I walked back to
the tent to get something , when I was about 3m away from the stairs I heard
rustling in front of me. I stopped and what was disappearing under the stairs
right in front of – a snake of course. I calmly turned around and bolted for
the car, Iain intrigued grabbed his camera to take a photo. Of course I had to
go with him to show him where the snake was; luckily it was nowhere to be seen.
That is 3 snakes in as many weeks! When I described to one of the staff later she informed me it was a black whip snake I had seen, not a Mulga, looking at pictures I am sure it was a Mulga - extremely venomous!
We got down to the gorge and got ourselves organised in a
canoe, it was not nearly as impressive as Sir John the day before, but we had
expected that. We weren’t even 100m from shore when Iain pulled a sarong out of
the camera bag, we heard a plop. Iain immediately realised it was the car keys!
We looked over the side into the water and knew straight away there was no
chance of finding them – it was way too deep. Iain was really upset, and the
more I tried to convince him to just let it go and get on with the day, the
more upset he got. We continued paddling and then out of the blue a headwind
blew straight up the gorge. We were paddling like mad just to keep moving, very
tough going. We eventually got to the end, parked up on some rocks and went for
a bit of an explore.
It was blazing hot, and we weren’t having fun, so we paddled
back to the beginning and went back to the car. We now had to get the car open
so we could get the spare keys out. Luckily we had left the rear pop up windows
unlocked. The first order of business was an ice cream – We buy 4 packs and put
2 in our freezer. You should have seen everyone else’s faces when we pulled
them out. We explained to the other people in the car park what had happened
and prepared to open the door – the alarm is rather loud. That accomplished we
headed back to camp.
We both lay on the bed to read, and fell asleep. It was
extremely hot and I woke up having a hot flush bathed in sweat. Luckily the
mini bar was stocked with cold drinks – a ginger beer went down very well. I
woke Iain up and we went down to the restaurant for another cake and coffee. We
got chatting to another couple that had just done the Sir John Gorge, before we
knew it, it was getting dark and we didn’t have a torch. I tell you I was
stomping my feet very hard so that we didn’t surprise any snakes!
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