Back from the Bush... with photos!

Hey Peoples! I've been out exploring a little bit of the Aussie bush and Aboriginal culture. The photos below are the first part of our trip to Pindar Cave which was home to an Aboriginal tribe for, ohhhh, only about 40 000 years. I would have liked to show you the walk we did along the ancient highway of the Wodi-Wodi peoples (by highway I mean invisible track that took all my bush knowledge to navigate) but I didn't take a camera. Which was a shame. We had a lot of close encounters with the wildlife. Extremely close. During lunch I looked down to see a very scaley head poking out from under the rock I was sitting on and happily using the back of my shoe as a pillow. After pooing my pants and gently persuading the little bugger to move his head I was able to determine it wasn't a snake. Only a 50cm lizard. Which quickly became six 50cm lizards and a little 10cm baby. We spent the next half hour playing hide and seek with them and convincing them we weren't climbing equipment or that our lunch wasn't lizard food. It was a unique experience, I've never met a more friendly and tenacious bunch of wild animals. Sorry, no camera.

Anyway, to Pindar...

This is the view off the train platform at Wondabyne. I have to climb that? Damn the train has already left and there isn't another for hours.

Luckily some nice person put in some stairs... surely an escalator would have been more appropriate!

We did eventually make it to the top only to find this poor Blue Gum bleeding freely. Apparently it had been shot during a drive-bye by a rival stand of Forest She-Oaks. The Aussie bush is a dangerous place.

This is the view back down the hill to Mullet Creek... I sat there for hours but didn't see a single bad haircut. Ripped off.

The track was hard to follow on this walk too. Somehow we managed to follow it.

The Greenies aren't going to be happy, someone left this whale laying in the bush. I assume it's part of some Japanese research project.

This old gentleman of the forest thought it would be a good idea to grow directly out of the rock face. ScribblyBarks aren't known for their common sense.

Why they're called ScribblyBarks! It takes local artists thousands of hours to mark the trees this way. It's not the Mona Lisa but it's a living.

OK, where'd the path go... this thing was meant to be easy to follow... um... it's out there somewhere... hopefully.

A beautiful example of tesselated rocks, or the ancient remnants of 'honeycomb' made by a now extinct race of giant stone bees. Bees!

Still no path... Only cliffs... Nice view though, time to stop for lunch!

Oh well, we're not that far from Broken Bay and Dangar Island, we can always swim back to civilisation. If you can call an island inhabited by millionaire two-headed giants civilisation. Rather than being eaten by giants I think we'll finish lunch and keep heading onwards to the cave. Mmmm, Lunch.

More later.