The Stay-at-home Tourist

Over the weekend I took Swedish couchsurfers Albin and Julia, and my 13-year-old sister on a camping trip to Litchfield National Park. It was my first camping trip with couchsurfers, and probably my second in my entire (albeit short) life, so there were a few learning curves. Firstly, it turned out that Walker Creek, where I was advised to camp, was right at the end of the 70+km road through the Park - past every other waterfall, campsite, lookout, etc, and it wasn’t well signed. So for a while we were almost convinced we had gone too far. Then, when our excitement about finally reaching our destination waned, we set off for the campsite. We hiked for ages in darkness with all our gear and probably a 20kg Esky, through mud and umpteen steps, but still no campsite. We turned back, only to find a sign that we missed at the start of the trail which showed that we had been on the right track. By the time we set up camp it was 10pm!

We did see a dingo though (well, Albin reckons he did) and a goanna who posed ever-so-willingly for Albin’s camera, and I also saw a spider defecate. Well I think that’s what it was doing, anyway. It just stuck its bum out of its web and spat something out of it, then went back to just sitting on his web as spiders usually do. And I never really thought about it till then, but I think if I was a spider I’d want my web to be as neat as possible and there’s no way I’d be doing my business in the web.

We also made some awesome pumpkin damper on the campfire and were absolute gluttons because we all agreed there was no way we were carting any food back down that stupid trail. Despite sleeping rather uncomfortably on inadequate bedding, I dreamt I was bitten by a death adder on the first night and on the second night I dreamt of being ripped off by a tuckshop lady who was trying to pass off ham + cheese + tomato between two crackers as a HCT toastie… something about cost cutting. Yep, so all in all a good camping trip. I might take my couchsurfers more often, actually, as most of them are more experienced in the art of camping than I am.

Brekky on the fire

Camera whore goanna