Day Fifteen - Walker Creek and Buley Rockhole

we awoke at sandy creek, and then off we went. i thought i should put in at least one photo of the massive magnetic termite mounds that are found throughout the park. apparently they're a real drawcard, but g and i found them a bit on the boring side. with a capital B. out of interest, they are not magnetic (contrary to popular belief and even what one NT tourist website i found claims), but line up north-south to avoid excessive exposure to the melting midday sun!

did anyone get confused in that last paragraph? did anyone get confused by the use of the term 'melting' as an adjective to describe the sun, or was it comprehensible? i recently re-discovered a project that i had written on the libyan desert in grade 3, and was surprised and somewhat offended to find that the only correction made by miss jacobi (my butch lesbian grade 3 teacher who was kidding no-one with her sports outfits) was an underlining of the word 'melting' in the phrase "without water they will die under the melting sun". the word was underlined not once, but twice, and had a question mark placed next to it. miss jacobi also saw fit to make a single comment, this one with regards to my drawing of a sun (that i had pasted onto my title page), "it could have been cut out straighter". little did i suspect at the time that it was for neither her nor i to be discussing what should or shouldn't be straight, but i did suspect that the bitch had massively overlooked the time and effort i had put into researching that project and done me a disservice by picking on what was clearly a comprehensible adjective, and a minor fault on a title page, when no-one else in that class of 8 years olds even had a fucking title page. damn you, miss jacobi - damn you!

what was funky about walker creek was that you had 8 private little campgrounds - each large enough to fit just one camping group - and you could just pop your name onto a chalkboard at the entry to the walk to reserve your camping spot for the night. only one spot - number 6 - was open to being shared at all times - and this was because it was the best. g and i decided to fkk it.

now we had no problem being fkk, and we were certainly not embarrass. but it seemed that those who arrived to check out the area were embarrass: they be embarrass for us! it's not like we were standing there guns blazing as if we were in the fresh produce section of a saturday morning market trying to make a sale - we were discrete: discretely naked, and nakedly discrete. one group after the other came tramping down the trail until they suddenly realised that the two boys frolicking in the deep fish-filled pools of area number 6 - pools flowing with crystal clear water that shimmered in the sun as it dappled through the eucalypts - were fresher than fresh, and stunned by their own reactionary self-consciousness, they then stopped dead in their tracks: and they be embarrass. g and i reckon that area number 6 on the walker creek trail may have been the most beautiful and magical place we visited. it was glorious!

we soldiered on around wangi falls which was closed for swimming secondary to crocodile danger, and checked out tolmer falls. i don't know about you, but there's nothing less satisfying than looking at a waterfall that you can't swim under.

mid-afternoon we arrived at buley rockhole, a series of deep little plungepools each feeding into the next by small cascades. the crowds had descended upon the place, so it gave our eyes the chance to do some much-needed staring at hot strangers.

we set up camp in the nearby camping area and made our first and only fire of the whole trip! you weren't supposed to collect firewood there (many people arrived with their own wood strapped to the roofs of their vans), and though i'm usually quite good about following sensible rules in areas of natural beauty, ultimately it was the mosquitoes that forced my hand. they arrived like a plague as soon as the sun set, and even dousing our bodies in DEET had little effect. i felt that smoking them out was our only recourse, and naturally the hours of sitting by the campfire staring at the flames, the stars above, or the eyes of my lover were unintended but hugely enjoyable sequelae.

it was that night that g introduced me to the art of cooking the perfect marshmallow. how had i gone 30 years without ever knowing that when you cook a marshmallow, it should be lightly toasted on the outside but liquid in the centre? it is because i am not a man of patience. the frog, however, is a man of unlimited patience, and once taught, this art changed my life forever.

that night, the mosquito tribe returned to avenge their smoked-out cousins. through closed doors and windows, they infiltrated jasper, and waking from a deep sleep by the dentist's drill buzzing of their wings in my ears, i found g's naked and uncovered body dotted with the little bloodsuckers. do any of you remember e.honda from street fighter II - the big fat sumo whose special move was the 100 hand slap? well that night, on waking to the horror of g's mosquito-covered body, i was transported to my video-game past, and a split-second later i did an e.honda and delivered the hundred hand slap to all exposed areas of skin. those little mosquitoes were gone before they could even press down-down-back-punch. all i needed to complete the picture was the grand master sitting on a throne behind us looking down on my insect opponents with contempt before nodding my way and commanding: "finish them".