We awoke to pegs being hammered in. I thought I'd better check to see
if we were in the way. We weren't.
The sound was of a new group of campers with tents, who had just
arrived.
They were setting up lower down.
In the daylight I could see we weren't able to go into the camping
area, as there were low posts preventing vehicles from entering, so
I decided we'd shift closer to the posts to allow other vehicles to
turn in front of the toilets and, unless we were told otherwise, we
would stay put.
It was really handy to the toilets anyway.
The heat hadn't eased off, in fact the humidity had increased.
I did some washing and decided to take a wander around to see what
was of such great interest to the locals. To us, it was just a free
camping spot on our travels.
I had read that it was an area where gold was found.
From the diggings I saw and the type of rock, I could see where they
had been, although much had retuned to forest floor.
Below are pics I took to show what was around.
The trees were similar to the trees at Cape Otway Lightstation
area, so I assumed Koalas could be in the trees, although I
didn't see any on my walk.
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It was New Years Eve, not that we took much notice, and the new
campers came over and introduced themselves. They asked if we were
celebrating in any way. We told them "not really" and they extended an
invitation to us to join them if we wanted to. They were visiting from
New Zealand. A very friendly lot.
I had Internet signal, so I looked at the weather site. It showed a
really vigorous storm front heading our way. Finally some relief from
the heat.
I was slightly concerned about trees falling on the van etc, so kept a
good eye on the radar.
Around dark I asked the campers if they knew storms were on their way.
They didn't know and didn't seem overly concerned. By then they were
well into celebrating.
The storms arrived around 8pm and were similar to the storms we have in
Kingaroy. We sheltered in the van, looking out regularly to see
if all was ok.
The campers had a kitchen tent erected. It felt the full fury of the
wind and rain. They were all huddled in it, like drowned rats.
The wind in the tree tops roared as the front passed through. Lightning
crackled around us but luckily there was no damage.
The camper's celebrations were called off for a while as they cleaned
up.
Around 11pm as we were thinking of going to bed there was a knock on the
caravan door.
One of the campers was again inviting us over but we declined politely.
Goodbye 2009.
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