You should have seen it - there we were fighting our way up a raging creek having to traverse slippery boulders while fighting through the brambles with inch long thorns that seem to come at you from everywhere.Across the raging creek we jumped with no abandon (we made it except for one wet shoe, to protect the identity and dignity of the person who ended up with the wet shoe I will not reveal who was so unfortunate), the next hazard was giant ticks all we had to fight them off was a metho soaked tissue and a pair of tweezers but we prevailed.All of this just to get to our campsite.

Camp Cooking 101:

• Prepare the shoe, cleaning well;
• Note - any shoe will do but the plastic running shoe will give you the best results!
• Lightly marinade in soy sauce for 10 minutes;
• Prepare a roaring fire;
• Place tent pegs in a semi circle in front of the fire;
• Carefully place the shoes upright leaning on the pegs in front of the fire;
• Now go to bed and in the morning you will have a feast of shoe!

No reason to ever worry about going hungry again with this recipe.

Well the saga of the roasted shoes was resolved in Warwick with the help of a sports store and Ansvar now the Hughes tribe have been re-shod ready for any hiking / camping peril that comes their way.

Just FYI - out of the Hughes tribe, Jaidyn is the tastiest or sweetest.In a recent survey of the average joe blow tick, Jaidyn was voted as the number one bite destination with a light nutty flavour that was pleasing to the palette.So there you have it, how could 53 million ticks be wrong?"Pappa Pig - off course"

Today is Monday and just across from our Caravan Park are the Queen Mary waterfalls.Early in the morning we descended down a steep hill and over a bridge next to the waterfall and back up the other side.Tonight we handfed a possum - it was very tame and it liked apples.It ate 1 ½ apples and we could even pat it!"Brodie Pig"

We are staying at the Queen Mary Falls - about 30km out of Warick (your birthplace I hear Asher).The actual QM falls are a beautiful 40m drop into a rock pool.Before we knew how tall it was Mum and I had a guess - Mum guessed 100m (yeh right!)After waterfall sightseeing we went some new unbaked shoes.We arrived back at the caravan park to hand feed the very tame birds (seee photos).Nan, you think your birds are tame!You hold out your hand with some seed and the 'wild' parrots would perch on your arm, head, shoulder wherever and start eating!The best bird by far was the Satin Bower Bird.It collects EVERYTHING blue and lays it around its U-shaped bower.It collected a so good lidand blue card from in front of us!"Callum piggy"

We got to our camp spot quite late and had tea then played taboo and UNO.The next morning we got to walk to the QM waterfalls and then all the way back out again - Mum would not carry me.We then went to get some new shoes - mine are cool - better than my old ones!I loved feeding the birds on my hand, except they scratched my arms.I liked it here but I got lots of ticks so I am glad to leave!!"Jaidyn Piggy"