Woke up to our tropical oasis at 'Eddie's' camp with beautiful sunshine. We had a cook up of pancakes for everyone and the kids loved them!!!
At 8:30am the kids were dressed in their bathers and down on the beach building their pool with the shovels. All the kids are playing well together and there's a little gang. There's now Boo, Meg, Jeremy, Acacia, Maleka, Emily and James.
The day was pretty lazy with the adults all sitting around with our feet in the small stream and the kids played in their 'pool' all day until 4:30pm!!!! Could not believe how long they were amused with shovels and water.
In the early afternoon we all piled into the cars and took a drive around to 'colored sands' beach again to see if we could see sone crocs. When we got around there we saw a little croc getting back into the water, it was around 1m long- just a baby. We were looking around towards our camp when we noticed some smoke from a fire out behind the camp area. Didn't think much of it, got back to camp and the smoke was a little thick. The afternoon dragged out and aroubd 5pm l went for a cold shower and when l walked out had noticed the smell of smoke was stronger and smoke thicker. Kerrie noticed too and went and saw Eddie, who didn't seem too concerned and didnt even know the smoke had gotten worse. Everyone had their tea and were monitoring the smoke with concern. Then we saw orange in the sky beyond the valley, then panic set on. The police turned up to have a chat and said that they couldn't be certain that it wouldn't come thru camp. They stated that if the wind stayed the same we'd be right but if it changed it would pass thru camp. We all were undecided to what to do but all agreed that we should pack stuff up to evacuate quickly if needed. Then the smoke cleared, the orange sky disappeared and you could see the stars again. Panic eased, we thought that maybe we had overreacted and we sort of stood around for a little. Then we saw orange skies and thick smoke to the left of prior fire just behind Andy's and Julia's camp. That was it, decision to evacuate was made. Took a few hours and everyone helped one another out. By 10:30pm we were all ready to go, had decided to head to a caravan park on the other side if Hopevale called Endevour Falls. Pulled up and said goodbye to Eddie, who still wasn't concerned but raised his eyebrows sort of surprised when we told him the direction of fire had changed and wad closer. By midnight we pulled up at Endevour Falls and set up for the night. Marty and l just put the awning off the Nissan out and rolled out the mattresses and sleeping bags and slept there. Couldn't be bothered with the tent. We carried the girls out of the car, who slept thru it all and put them into bed. Everyone sat around tired and exhausted but silently grateful we were all safe and thinking we'd made the right call. We all said goodnight at 1am. What a day!!!!
Bell Xx