Eggbert's Travels

Friday 13^th October 2017

SHE SAID:

With an improvement in the weather we set out for the day.

I thought we would do yesterday's planned route, but we needed to drop the rubbish off at the Ballendean tip (there is no rubbish collection here). This was in the opposite direction to the way I thought we would go. So I decided instead we would go into the Sundown National Park on the 4WD access road.

The track in was very rough & climbed to over 1040m. The 7.4km took us around 50 minutes one way & 35 minutes return! There was a short 400m return walk to the lookout at Red Rock Gorge. I spotted large amount of Rock Orchids (Dendrobiums) on one of the cliff faces, but they weren't flowering. And below us a lot of Dockrillia in flower too (not sure of their type).

Back at the car we had a cuppa & a wander; it was Geoff's turn to spot an orchid; a Hyacinth Orchid in bud, like my find in Girraween National Park a couple of days ago, it was still small, & probably several weeks away from flowering. We spotted several types of macropods (kangaroos & wallabies) on the drive, also lizards, dragons & surprisingly a deer!

Archie goes into another National Park

A real lounging lizard

Interesting fungi

Young Wallaroo

Views from the lookout

The waterfall had dried up; just a pool remained above the black streak

Solid looking adult Wallaroo giving us the eye

We spotted this bearded dragon, but it was quite

shy...disappearing as I tried to get closer

Looking back towards the Sundown National Park

Headed towards Ballendean

HE SAID:

I was surprised at how the track deteriorated once we entered the national park. The 7km seemed to take ages, as we were in first gear 4WD crawling uphill over rocks most of the way.

On our return to the house we found that the water flow meter that I ordered had finally arrived. As our water tank gauge had been busted for ages we've been unsure of our water consumption. I fitted the device after lunch and hopefully we can now manage our water stores and not run out mid-shower!