Who knows what is hidden inside a bush

The Australian bush is reknowned for being an inhospitable place to roam, so we believed that a stroll in a national park only a few kilometres outside of The Entrance would be fairly simple exercise. You know the kind of thing, a wide gravelled pathway and a few signs here and there pointing the way and picnic tables/viewpoints all around the way. How wrong could we be!

I think we should have guessed when we arrived at the car park - a single sign right next to a small pull in off the main road and a single board telling of the tracks and trails you can explore from that point.

We had packed a picnic and although there was a table at the car park, decided we'd go off around the paths and stop halfway round (the total length of the tracks was around 8km). The sign pointed us up a woodland path and over a small crest. We instantly thought that sandals, flip flops and shorts was not the ideal get up to be walking around here, but figured it would be fairly easy going. The path suddenly closed in and the plants (mainly ferns) were overgrowing the path all the way along. Now in the UK I would not have been at all phased by this, but living in a country where I have no idea what any wildlife is, and certainly not knowing what is or is not dangerous suddenly made us all very jumpy. Em was panicking due to the large spiders hanging in trees, Izzy was convinced every bush had something in, and I was just hyper sensitive to any changes in the undergrowth in case there were any snakes etc, lying around the footpath. This was not easy as the plants overgrew the edges of the narrow track and there was no option but to walk through plantlife.

I did spot a few nice bits to note. There were lots of small lizards and a couple of dragonflies which I know dad would be interested in. One kept following me ... up to the point where I saw a bloody large orange wasp/hornet type flying thing and didn't want to go any further. Thankfully it flew off and Iz told me to carry on. The only other bit was walking through a small web with a tiny spider in it (about 1/4 inch) and panicked ... well it could have been a baby evil nasty Richard killing spider, at least that's what I say!!

After about half an hour, we made it into a clearing and onto the main pathway and breathed a sigh of relief as the main path seemed to suggest that the remainder of the tracks would not be quite so scary.

Again...we were wrong. The path again became narrow, overgrown and rather scary looking and deciding that we would all prefer to get out of the forest without any bites, we left the trail at the road and headed back to the car!

We then left the car park and headed about half a mile down the road to the beach and ate our picnic in the dunes whilst watching the massive waves crash onto the shore. I went off for a run around the dunes and left Em and Iz sunbathing and whilst I was away, they saw a large lizard run across the dunes in front of them. I went off and spent a bit of time down by the sea and took some photos, sat watching the seagulls and just getting mesmerised by the swell. It brings back memories of sitting infront of a fire at camp - always changing and can just make you drift away.

All in all a rather interesting day!

Tootle pip,

Rich