Partay: Me, Anne Williamson, Nadira Yapa, Bryden Lenne, Chris Kane, Gary Froyland, Sang Trang, Jurjen van Geenen and Mike Milnes.
Short report: We went, we walked, we talked, we stayed the night, we walked some more and talked some more and then we came home.
Long version:
The Bureau said 'showers clearing', but fortunately they were wrong (no surprises there) and we had two days of perfect weather :)
We had a bit of a bumpy start on Saturday morning... half of us arriving at the Royal NP at 8.30am and waiting for Sang's car to show up... and waiting... and waiting... and then when we finally gave up waiting, they showed up!! There was some kind of long-winded excuse relating to sat nav and petrol... but we're pretty sure they just slept in!! :P
So just before the crack of noon we finally started walking... and the drama was soon forgotten as we enjoyed the beautiful scenery and good conversation on an absolutely perfect day. We walked the planned 12km route from the Marley car park down the Marley trail to the coast, and then south down the coast track to Garie beach. We saw lots of flowers, birds and other wildlife - mostly bearded dragons, goannas and other lizards. We also saw whales :) Fortunately we didn't see any snakes :) We stayed the night at Garie beach YHA. And for those of you who think that this was a soft option, I'll have you know that we braved the horrors of a composting loo much worse than any hole in the ground!! Not to mention the bush rats, windows without fly screens, a bottle of muskat, animated discussion on a range of not-to-be-repeated topics, and two sleep talkers (yes, one of them was me)! So you can see that we really roughed it!!!
Anyhoo... the weather was absolutely perfect again on Sunday... but we were a bit slack and drove our cars to the start of the Burning Palm Jungle loop track - cutting the walk down to approx 8km. Again it was beautiful - but the scenery was very different to the previous day, with a wide range of ever-changing scenery, from dense forest to open grassland to beach, and just about everything in between. Again, good conversation and lots of wildlife :)
What a great weekend!! Hope you enjoyed reading about it :) If you're very lucky, someone might send around some photos.
Cheers,
Lois