Iluka and Grafton

10 January 2006 9am-ish

We're in Bundjalung National Park. This morning was all blue skies and white fluffy clouds, so we got excited about bush walking and drove here. we got out, organised our pack, put on insect repellant, and it started bloody raining. so now we're hanging out at some undercover picnic tables, waiting for the weather to clear. the drive here was so absolutely gorgeous so we really want to do this walk. much as liz and i both love bushwalking, the ulterior motive here is to make sure we stay fit. we made a commitment to ourselves that we would be the sort of travellers who come back fit, not the sort who come back 3 times their size. i've worked too bloody hard to let that happen - but day 1 didn't really bode well. we spent the whole day eating, drinking, napping, and "ooh-ing" and "aal-ing" as we drove along. we did walk for over half an hour though around Maclean. A bit of a pissy, half-arsed effort, sure, but at least something.

11:55am

Well, we did it, and enjoyed it thoroughly. we walked about 6km, most of it in pouring rain, and i now have blisters on the inside of my toes. i knew i should have cut my toenails.

one of the things i think i'm really going to enjoy about this trip is camp tea. it just tasted so good after it's been brewed in a billy on a camp stove, and flavoured with UHT milk, drunk from a melamine mug. i guess it probably has something to do with the effort involved. when you have to work this hard for a cup of tea, it tastes bloody good, dammit!

Another thing i'm enjoying is being able to wear whatever i like, without feeling like i have to conform to any sort of code.

i'm winding down, but it's taking some time to really let myself start to chill out.

i'm still waking in the middle of the night every night, then tossing and turning till morning. it started just after woodford, and i'm beginning to get a little sick of it. the strange thing is at the time there's nothing racing around my head. i'm not worrying or fretting about anything at all. i feel emotionally relatively settled at the moment - or at least i thought so. i did have that weird episode of fear yesterday about drawing. ok, maybe i'm hiding something from myself.

liz and i are already quickly settling into a routing - we've totally reorganised most of our stuff to make it more easily accessible, and we're just taking things as they come.

5:40pm-ish

ficus viven = giant fig thing in grafton. very cool.

8:20pm

we're sitting on a deck, drinking Coopers Pale Ale ($3.50 schooners) and just watched 20 million fruit bats fly past. i'm serious. 20 million. Apparently they do this every day. they live on some island in the middle of the river and fly towards Coffs Harbour in search of fruit, then fly back. the sky was black with bats. Black, i tells ya.

Right. Now i'm on a mission to see if they'll sell us kiddies serves of ice cream. getting our priorities straight.

Hooray! ice cream with chocolate topping on the way! ok, we're going to have to triple our exercise...