Canarvon Gorge.

My last post and the meeting up with BIL Peter brings to mind a couple
of stories that he was involved in.

We'll start with one when Pete would have probably been about 9 years
old, he was visiting us (with his parents) in Queensland and my two
youngest sons were also there, so we decided on a "boys trip" to
Canarvon Gorge a beautiful spot about 4 hours away from home.

So we loaded up the car with Tent, sleeping bags, sundry camping
gear, and some food, there were no drama's in getting there and
getting our camp site set up, for background information Canarvon
Gorge is about an hour away from the nearest SMALL town and at the
time I'm speaking of pretty near no facilities except a tiny store that
opened for a couple of hours most days and had fresh bread evert 3 or
4 days... you get the picture a pretty remote "Mans world".

And were the four of us set to enjoy that "Mans world", I told the boys
tales of anything I could think of that was either funny or scary around
a campfire with blackened sausages and the like inexpertly cooked
but devouded with great gusto.

Canarvon's main claim to fame is the magnificent 8 mile walk from
one end to the other, there is a creek that meanders lazily along the
Gorge floor, you criss cross this on stepping stones about 15 times
as well there are many offshoots to explore, cliff faces to climb to
exotic fern gardens, in short a boys paradise.

We had arranged to spend four days away and didn't need to get back
early on day four, so we were on the go from early till late and havin' a
ball, to liven up our walks along the Gorge we played hoppo bumpo
which if you are unsure of simply means crashing all and sundry while
hopping, this got a bit tame after a while so we set it up as a
motorised game.

The boys were graded in size to a suitable sized car, we had a Holden
(6cylinder family size) a Volkswagon, and a Mimi Minor, then there
was a Mack truck, part played by one who will remain nameless.

We careered around for most of a day in these roles without a single
scar or argument, some sort of achievement!!!

During this time Julie, with her Dads help was keeping the service
station open and productive, as well she had a good visit with her
parents while I entertained the boys and myself, a win, win deal.

There were no problems with that trip and we all enjoyed it so much
we decided to go back there a few years later Julie and I with two boys
this time, again Julie's parents were left in charge of things, (we no
longer had a service station so it wasn't a drama) once more we
explored the beauty of Canarvon and had a great time.

On the last night we planned to be there it rained, ALL BLOODY NIGHT,
you might recall mention in story 1 of the little creek that meandered
lazily up the Gorge? yes?.... well now it's a raging torrent about 8 feet
deep and of course... it's between us and home!!!

We are now marooned and like everyone else there, (about 10 cars and
25 people) we have pretty much used up our food supplies, we
swooped on the little store, that fortuneately had increased in size
quite a bit, but when 25 hungry people decended on it their supplies
ran out pretty quickly.

The bread of course was a priority so they rationed that, then anything
that could possibly be eaten with bread disappeared, we wound up with
a tin of vegitarion sausages for our last meal, I would not have been
surprised if it had been our last meal!! suffice to say no one in that
group has, or ever will, eat them again.

My occupation at this time was driving a school bus that I had bought,
on the morning that we were stranded we had managed to get a phone
call through to Julie's folks and asked them to try to arrange for the
guy I had bought the bus run from to drive on the monday, (first day
back at school after holidays) then the phone service went dead, so we
didn't know what the outcome was.

On the Monday afternoon the water level had dropped quite a bit and
a local farmer turned up with his tractor and offered to haul anyone
who was game over the creek, naturally we lined up for this adventure.

Long story shortened, we got across the creek fine and after a pretty
hairy ride reached the bitumen, there was a bridge under 10 feet of
water on the road we wanted to use so we had to go the LONG way
round and got home finally late Tuesday, two days late but as luck
would have it the bus run had been taken care of so no harm done.
During all of this Pete was a pleasure to have along, I'm guessing he
would have been about 13 or 14 by this time, similar age to my Son
Marcus who was living with us by this time, as I said Pete and Holtie
go back aways.