Our first trip! We finally got on the road. After registering our new vehicle and packing it up we headed on the road to Mungo Brush Campground. It is a large campground located on a brackish lake. Our first Australian camping experience was wonderful. The camp spots were grouped in fours, and the other three families that shared our quad were lovely. One was an elderly couple from Forster camping with their two grand children. Another was a Sydney couple with their 15 month old, and the other were two families with 4 kids all in Kindy (Kindergarten) or younger. We spent two nights at this campground. The kids loved swimming in the lake and swinging on the rope swing. We saw Australian Black Swans, St. Andrews Cross spiders (venomous but not deadly) and Huntsman spiders (not venomous). We also learned about Bull Ants and Jumping Jack Ants - both of them have a bite like a bee sting. On our first night camping there we went on a walk around the campground after dinner and saw hundreds and hundreds of "flying foxes" or large fruit bats. After the kids went to bed in the tent, Tom and I had a large one land in the tree right over our heads. We also had a dingo run by. It was hard to see, but was no more than two meters away from us. We didn't have a camp light on, so I think we surprised it as much as it surprised us.
On our full day at Myall National Park we visited Dark Point which are some dunes that we had visited 8 years ago when we came to Australia to visit my sister-in-law Grace. It is a beautiful area that the local native tribes have been using for food gathering and a meeting/trading place for different tribes for the last 4000 years. There is even a whole area of the dune that is roped off because of all the artifacts that are still being found in that area. On the third night we took a tip by the Sydney couple and drove to Yagon Campground out by the Sugarloaf Point Lighthouse. We washed some clothes in the ocean and watched small hole-dwelling crab on the beach. The campground had a lot of Bush Turkey, Goanna, and horseflies. It also had a lot of aggressive Kookaburra. We had a couple sitting on a branch right over the kids' heads when we were cooking dinner. As soon as Olin stuck his fork in his sausage and took a bite, one of the kookaburra flew down and snatched the remainder of the sausage off his fork! The day after our night in Yagon, we hiked out to the Sugarloaf Point Lighthouse. It was beautiful. The pictures below can tell the story there. The kids kept asking to go swimming and Tom and I knew that we needed to get on the road, so rather than swimming at a really inviting swimming hole, we drove on to Booti Booti National Park and pulled over at the Ruins Campground for some swimming and showers. We went out to the beach and noticed immediately that there was only one other couple in the water swimming. We figured it was because it was hot and lunchtime so everyone else was back at their campsites. It didn't take long for us (and the other couple) to realize why no one was in the water. The water was full of blue bottles. No.... they aren't a cute little blue creature like their names might suggest or pretty blue glass bottles.....They are also known as (and more appropriately called) Portuguese Man of War and they were in the water... with us!!! (They are a creature that are very much like a jelly fish. And they are poisonous.) I was the first to get zapped, but only on the ankle by a stray tentacle, so was more confused by the experience than alarmed. "Tom," I said. "Can jellyfish be blue?" He said he didn't know. Suddenly I got smacked HARD on the leg by one of the blue bottles. "Get out of the water! Get out of the water!" I yelled. I was impressed with how quickly the kids and Tom got out. My whole leg was on fire. It was like I had burned myself on the wood stove. I ran over to the couple in the water, who were clearly just realizing the blue bottles were in the water, and yelled at them to get out. They acknowledged and joined me. "Are we going to die?" I asked them? I felt like my leg was on fire! They laughed. "Oh no! These are just blue bottles. They're pretty harmless." Um.... My respect for Australian pain tolerance and ability to not get worked up about things that hurt just rose incredibly. I can't remember when my skin had been in so much pain last. I asked what I should do and they said to put hot water on it - as hot as I could stand it. So we said goodbye and went to our car to start heating up some water. Seriously.... Putting hot water on something that burns seems ridiculous, but it really works. For about 20 minutes I dabbed a pair of Alta's clean undies into a pot of hot hot water and laid it across the angry welt on my leg. I just kept saying over and over how happy I was that my kids didn't get stung. I never want my kids to experience that. After a little while the pain went away and I put some medicated creme on it, and we kept driving. I did mention to Tom though that it felt like the poison was traveling up to where my leg attaches to my body. The couple (and the internet) said I wasn't going to die, though so I stopped worrying about it. We also learned a valuable lesson. If no one else is in the water, don't go in! Another note on the blue bottles is that I told two different people that were suiting up to go surfing that there were blue bottles in the water, and they just shrugged it off and said they'd "give it a go." Um.... Australians are by far either the craziest or toughest people I have ever met. After a lot of driving we made our way to Crowdy Bay National Park and to the Indian Head Picnic Area and Campground. Upon driving in we were greeted by two black tailed kangaroos - and a really talkative woman and her son! She lent us her camp stove to cook our dinner and talked to us all about the history of the area. The kids joined a pick-up soccer match with some of the other campground kids (yay)! And we spent an uneventful/restful evening listening to the goanna in the woods and watching the stars. We were going to head to another campground the next day, but I did not feel well. All my lymph nodes were telling me I was getting sick.... but it was a funny sick, because other than feeling a little nauseous there were no other symptoms. After looking up some side effects of being zapped by blue bottles, I realized that I was probably experiencing some and so we decided just to head home. So.... there we have it. Our first camping adventure. Dingos, spiders, oh ya.... we saw a huge python on the road, and one of the ladies at the first campground said that their was a red-bellied black snake in our camp site earlier that day (augh! They are venomous- but arn't the 'chase you' kind of snakes.) We saw goanna (pronounced go-anna), death-angry-man-of-war-poisonous-jellyfish-like-monsters, and black swans. We were treated wonderfully by all the beautiful people that we met. This land is bipolar.
3 Comments
Cindy
1/17/2017 09:30:26
Wow! What an adventure! I sympathize with the blue bottle sting. I got stung by a Portuguese Man of War in Hawaii and the pain is indescribable. The cure there is to rub the stung with sand - I wish I had known about the hot water thing. We had other little ones that stung us but not as bad a s a Man of War or your Blue Bottles. I told Pat Perron (wonderful teacher at Ansbach) about your program and she was thrilled. She even squealed! She said you should apply to DoDDS. I told her you were doing that. The pictures are beautiful and I love experiencing your adventures vicariously. Thank you for sharing with us! Love and hugs to you all!
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Myla Liljemark
1/17/2017 11:38:01
Hi Cindy! I'm so glad you are enjoying the blog! I read about the sand, but I think that has been debunked now as not working nearly as much as the hot water. Seriously the hot water worked immediately!!!
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Naomi
1/17/2017 16:30:34
Myla, you look so free and wild and lovely. The picture of you at the beach with the kids in the background shows you so spirited and joyful. I love the picture of Alta in the water and the kids in the sand. The picture of Tom by the tent reminds me of our camping adventure last spring. Why do your kids already look so much older to me?
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AuthorThe Liljemark's enjoy exploring the world. This blog chronicles our adventures. Archives
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