Sunday 25th October

The Eastern Yellow Robin calls, wake up sleepy heads. The clouds skate across the sky and another day dawns on King's Plains.

We pack up slowly and wander off along the dirt road to Inverell.

A lot of normal stuff needs to be done, like fuel, water and some shopping. A few phone calls later and we are heading South out of town as the horse folk, all gathered at the show grounds ride around doing their thing. There are hundreds of them.

The road South is fine, however we want to go to this small National Park where the directions are only given from Manilla and we are coming from the East not the West. We wriggle around along roads with ambiguous signage and we seem to be right but the well signed road we are looking fo comes and goes. We double back and head across the river at a ford and up through what seems to be a farm yard and there is country Joe McDonald picking vegetables. We stop and talk to him.

Yes we are close, but the road from manila is up the hill there and turn right just beyond the grave yard.

Well sure enough, there are the family graves and there is the T junction and yes now we are on the road we wanted to be on all the while. So the message is beware of maps, you may not be on the line you think you are on or the road you are on may not be marked on the map.

"There, just off the roads, see it?" Sue has spotted a large Ekidna, he turns and tries to run, but she has her camera drawn and is blasting from the hip as she fires on the retreating figure. I stay in the car, I can't stand to see the masacare. She blows a wisp of smoke from her lens as we drive off in pursuit of more timid wild life.

We passed all the signs on the property next to the National Park, "no shooting, no camping, no fishing." We heave to the side of the road just in time as six or seven fishgans drive past in convoy, each car looks like a giant mock up of an eckidna made of fishing rods.

Warrabah National Park is a very attractive camp. The river flows through large granite sheets and round boulders. We fine a great campsite, really it is like a BnB, a small pile of fire wood is neatly tucked in a natural wood box formed by two boulders, next to the picnic table is a natural stone walls about five feet high with a small fif tree crafting a home in one of the cracks. We drive in and the camp is set. One has to love this Vantage camper. It is literally, open the door, pulls out the steps, turn on the gas and pop the roof - your work is done young man. This is truly a mobile eco resort.

We sit at the picnic table and have a cuppa and some magic fruit cake. Then roll down the hill 50 meters and we are standing on a rock looking across the flowing river. Splendid. There is a picnic ground along the creek with couch lawns and all this for, yes wait for it representatives of Big 4, yes $6 a night.

We check out the river and Sue spots another poor mother ecidna like Mrs Tiggy Winkle, heading home to her family. Well Mrs Tiggy Winkle is all shy and tries to hide, however Sue has found a pearch on a rock and she waits like a cat waits for a mouse. Mrs Tiggy Winkle, eventually thinks the coast is clear and then the paparazzi has her every move covered.

We say hi to the only other campers and stoke up the fire, bake corn in the coals and Mal sings a feew songs for his supper.

Did I mention that the Vicki the mobile Eco Resort has a hot shower. Yes and it is inside, not out in some drafty pop up tent.

And nice and clean, we pop off to bed, what a fabulous day, all the windows down for the clean mountain air and we drift off to sleep like new born babies (well it is traditional to say that, but really mostly they cry them selves to sleep.)

Monday 26th October

Dark and stormy the clouds so heavy they could barely stay aloft. The lightning crackled and the thunder rumbled up the valley. We could feel the wind gusts building, so we dropped the sails and battened the hatches before the storm swirled around us.

Vicki was ideal, we watched as the storm beat upon us and pelted rain onto our mud stained flanks. Then slowly the rain died away and the storm circled the hills in the distance never quite sure if it would attack again.

The sun finally broke through and we wandered down to the day area, Mal sat and watched the bubbles in the rapids while Sue scouted for unsuspecting birds, like a dollar bird.

In the afternoon Mal lay under a tree and read a book and Sue had a swim in the river. It was one of those lazy summer afternoons, Mal said he felt like he had skipped school.

We lit the fire and all was lining up to do a camp oven dish for tea, when those dark clouds from the morning stormed back down from the hills, they had lost their vigour after a long day so just managed a bit of feeble lightning and shower of rain to dampen our camp fire and put it in it's place.

Later on we were able to rekindle the fire's dampened spirits and encourage him to cook the tea - which he did admirably.

Mal dragged Sue up into the pine forest over the wet rocks to take photos in the moon light and then it was back down the hill, and unlike Jack and Jill no broken crowns, and off to bed.