Day 2

The people we shared the communal campfire with were going up Bluff Knoll at 5am to catch the sunrise today. We met them at the kitchen having just come back from the hike when we had just emerged from our tent. 5am is too dark and too cold to be hiking, plus we haven't even had coffee yet. The heart will not start beating till the first coffee was consumed.
We had a relatively lazy, relaxed day as the skies were grey with periodic showers that threatened to develop further. We did a very flat 4km walk around the retreat and spotted lots of orchid leaves but only one green hood banded orchid.
We started preparing lunch of pasta and precooked sauce at 1.30pm, only to realise that the inferior single burner stove took an hour to cook pasta without ever properly boiling. Ruby made the great suggestion that I cook the sauce in the camp kitchen and when the sauce was ready , the pasta still had more cooking to do.
We finally had lunch at 3pm.
We found Bluff Knoll sunrise family's stove top expresso maker and coffee in the kitchen. Ruby had the bright idea to get the office to call them so that we could take it to Perth for them to collect when they passed through. They were a family of 4 travelling from Melbourne and were very happy with that arrangement.
Our good deed done for the day.
The rest of the afternoon was spent sitting in the camp kitchen, dry under the tin roof but still subject to gusts of very cold wind.Read more