What a day.  This was only going to be a short walk, but it ended up totaling about 19km by the time that we finished up, around 7.30pm at night.  So, in two days, we have walked over 41km in the bush, uphill, downhill, across creeks, up & down ladders, reasonably strenuous exercise, but totally worth it.  Today was a day of WOWs, as each natural feature we saw was amazingly beautiful and the photos we took don’t even start to do justice to the grandeur and scale of it all, not to mention the colours and contrasts.

We started our day at Ward’s Canyon, a small, beautiful narrow side gorge above a waterfall. With a pocket of rare king ferns & the floor of the creek coated with red algae, simply stunning.  Our next venture was to the amphitheatre, what an amazing place, entered through a tiny slit in the cliff face above a waterfall about 10m up, then through a very narrow crack in the rocks into a massive 60m deep basin that water has eroded into the sandstone.  Again, simply amazing.  Onto the Moss Garden, a very pretty gorge with water constantly dripping out of the walls creating a natural water mist for the profusion of mosses & ferns that grew there, with a small beautiful waterfall as a backdrop.  From there we went to Mickey Creek gorge & the small Warrumbah side gorge, which was again, absolutely beautiful, with a massive sheer cliff down to the water as a backdrop to the waterfall, mosses, ferns, staghorns, elkhorns & the rest of the enormous variety of plant life.  Our last daylight stop was Baloon Cave, another small aboriginal painting site.

Then into our night walk with Simon, a very knowledgeable guide to spot sugar gliders.  We were very fortunate & spotted three different species of sugar glider & even more fortunate to see two of them gliding between trees.  It’s amazing how many sugar gliders there are in such a small area that we spotlighted in.  I’m very glad we had Simon guiding as he knew where to look, what to look for & what to listen for, plus the different calls that they made.  It was a very special evening, made even more so by the stunning array of stars on a clear cloudless night as a backdrop.

Our legs are so tired.

Wow what a day!!  Feeling stiff calf and thigh muscles we dragged ourselves out of bed and had a very quick breakfast, packed lunch and we were off by 8.10 am.   Amazing that once we started to move how quickly our legs eased up.  We back tracked (as there is only one path) to where we left off yesterday so that we could look at all the other sights that we missed.  The walk was so different today because of the different sunlight. The places we went to were once again simply magical.  Yesterday because we had an early start we were most of the time on our own out the front heading to the end of the   track. Today it was a lot more social, we met people from lots of place even overseas ones, the reason is because these places are closer and most people only go this far.

While at the camping ground we used the great outdoor kitchen and dining area – we met so many people, young eager back packers, families with young children from all over the world (today a young Danish family told us that they stole our Princess Mary and she is doing a great job and they haven’t been anywhere where it’s been so lovely and such friendly people – their Prince Frederick did well) and others (like us or even a lot older).  Everyone is friendly (hardly ever a name is exchanged) ready to tell you where they have been or where they are going, advising you what to look out for.  When I go home I will be lobbying our government about putting up a kitchen dining area in every street – just think, we would even get to know our neighbours.