THURSDAY 4 JUNE     CARNARVON GORGE

I was woken at 7am by John, who wanted me to get a new packet of his Celebrex pills out from my medical store under the bed. Apart from me knowing where things were, accessing under the bed required that no one be in it at the time.

When John went to take a Celebrex, late last night, because of the painful hip, he discovered that the pack was empty. Of course, whenever he’d taken the last pill, he’d just put the empty pack back in the cupboard. So, down on the knees for me, lifted up the bed base – gas struts are a great invention – and fished out his medicine. A “discussion” ensued, along the lines that this was the last packet, this was not my poor organization, or fault, he’d been told quite clearly, back in March, that this was only a three month script rather than the usual six, etc.

By then, I was too awake to go back to bed.

When I took my coffee to sit outside, the sky was clear and blue. I watched the place come to life. Then, by 8am, cloud had started coming across again.

There was an item on the news I listened to on my little radio, about the swine flu that had turned into an epidemic in Victoria. Despite the name, it was a nasty form of people flu. A week ago, there had been no cases in Qld, now they had twenty eight. Bit scary how quickly it had spread and grown. I just hoped it didn’t get in amongst the grey nomad population in Queensland, where we were heading.

When I wandered across to check if there was anything new, Reception had put a notice up – a fax from the Rolleston Police, saying the road from the highway to Carnarvon Gorge was closed to all vehicles except 4WD ones, and there was no towing of anything allowed. The penalty for ignoring this was a $4000 fine, plus any costs for recovery, repairs to road damage caused. So, they did have some teeth!

Perhaps they should have stationed someone at the road and highway corner, though? The young couple opposite us packed up their camper and left. They actually had to get another vehicle to tow the camper up the hill on the – closed – road, because something was broken on his toy 4WD. A few others left too, carefully removing the barrier tape across the track to do so! I could only hope that karma caught up with them, sooner or later.

John eventually woke up – late. We had a late breakfast (him)/early lunch (me, as I’d had my breakfast a few hours earlier.)

Went walking again. Followed the track along the creek, past a number of really pretty pools. The walking track joined the Park road near the Wilderness Lodge and we then followed the road to the Mickey Creek walking track.

This followed Mickey Creek up into a small gorge, and was a lovely walk.

The gorge was small scale – miniature, compared to the main Carnarvon Gorge – but not as scoured out. Its appearance was more like I remembered the main gorge to have been. However, the creek was much smaller and could be stepped across.

We retraced the route as far as the Wilderness Lodge, then followed the road back to camp. It was shorter than the winding, creekside track had been, if not as pretty. I thought we’d walked about 8 or 9kms. It took us a bit over three hours.

When we reached Takkarakka, about 4.30pm, the road closed signs had been removed and several vans were leaving. They may have been worried that the rain would come back overnight!

Sausages and mash for tea, then an early night, being tired after all that fresh air and exercise.