Day 440 | More Lynd River: with a campsite like this, what's the hurry
rest day
The biggest surprise about north Queensland is the sparseness in number of mosquitos, guess there’s sufficient frogs or other insects to deal with the larvae.
The campsite adjacent to the river is on coarse granite sand so there’s no ants either, that beats the other night at 5 Mile Creek where I shared the campsite with the largest bull ants of my travels, thickset critters that somehow managed to gain entrance to my tent, nasty looking pincers waving at me, but here not even a black ant.
And considering the proximity of the cattle no flies either.
Together with the shade and the sound of flowing water it’s just the place to spend a relaxing Sunday, well, after I’ve done the washing.
Just to make this natural Paradise complete an Agile Wallaby cruises past, not even past, he stops 20 feet from the tent and munches on the only green vegetation at ground level that I can see. He’s unconcerned by my presence, maybe the nearby fire masks my smell, his nose twitches but he sticks around.
When I make lunch on this fire that’s been foolishly left by previous campers, a massive log, a tree in fact, is still burning and I see my friend relaxing in the shade just 20 feet away, slowly he gets up, eventually, and walks on down for a drink, that’s not the usual marsupial hop, just using his tiny arms and out of proportion thighs, I see he’s scrawny, not looking so healthy.
I retire to the tent for an afternoon nap and am later disturbed as a 4WD rolls down the causeway, Ka-boom, it backfires.
Actually it’s clear it’s too loud for a backfire, I know what’s happened.
I wait for the laughing to dies down, the blokes have their dip and drive away, then go to investigate: my friend has a bullet in the chest, not 20 feet from the road, the shell case I find reads 30-30, lever action .303.
Unbelievably my tent was in direct line of fire behind the only bit of shrubbery around, only 50 m beyond.
I look at that sad face and am reminded of an old Radio National poetry podcast I listened to yesterday which included a poem describing Sarah Palin shooting a moose:
The moose had the look of most dead or dying herbivores,
Polite, puzzled, as if still trying to be helpful …