Innamincka 23-8-12 to 26-8-12

We all had a great nights sleep on the first night.  The birds started calling at dawn, the pelicans came gliding down the river in flotillas.

Michael and Tony assembled Tony’s new boat and I caught up on the blog.  All very, very pleasant.

To Dean: When Michael and Tony put the Sea Eagle together Tony has told me to tell you  that he wishes you were here for a paddle.

We are having a lazy time, lovely.

Tony and Jennifer like an afternoon nap every afternoon and Michael and I sit under a big red gum in the shade reading a book (heaven – except for the flies when they arrive.  There is a host of flies around about lunch time then a breeze blows up and they are gone.  The weather is fantastic – about 25-26 degrees.  (it was 33 on the way here, but we could put our air conditioners on if we chose).  Nights are coolish but we are well equipped.

Michael and Tony take the sea eagle out several times and stop at neighbouring camp sites chatting to the people.  A couple of the camp sites have toilets (we don’t), but are their sites are not as good as ours.

The Park rangers called to check our permits etc. (Hehe Tony has put his on the Nissan Patrol, but has brought the troopie – fortunately they were up at Innamincka getting fuel ready for leaving tomorrow. It wouldn’t have been a problem, Tony and Jennifer renew their permits every year ‘just in case’ so they could easily be checked up on.  The ranger tells us that the trees (one each) that we are camping under are Coolabah trees, shades of waltzing Matilda.

Tony experiments with his cooking and makes baked apples Dean (He says they are the ones we picked in Wonnangatta –do you believe him?  Haha)

We went on a 10 minute night walk with Tony to see if we could spot any wild life.  Not a thing except for glowing little jewels in the grass which turn out to be spiders (probably their eyes catching the light), there are a great many of them.  We have seen them in other places, they are very wide spread.

I went for a walk and disturbed a rabbit, Tony routed one later, but really nothing else.  We think we saw the tracks of a ‘dog/dingo but didn’t see it.  We had a strange little track that went across the road between our 2 camps, we think it was a large lizard.  Funny thing is, it’s tracks were over ours which means it must have crossed during the day, but we didn’t see it.

Every day an army of ants (60 cm wide troop) march down towards the river which must be at least 100+ metres away from their nest, they pass by us for several hours, then come back later in the afternoon, some with food / ant eggs.  This is quite a walk on their little legs.  On the first day we were there they marched across to our tent and ‘had a look’ after that they ignored us and resumed their usual path.

We walked to the King’s site where King from the Burke and Wills fiasco was rescued.  When we leave here we are going to Burkes grave site and the “Dig Tree’.

There is a blue photo (sky) in the album, if you can enlarge them you may see the birds.  They are some kind of hawk/eagle/falcon circling high above on the thermals, there must have been 50 or so, we have never seen so many together.

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