Thorsborne Log Day 4

I get up and go skinny dipping in the sea at sunrise.

I begin to understand the appeal of free body culture. What a great day! I wash in the lagoon and set off to fetch drinking water upstream. Last night a few rain drops hit my tent, maybe there’s more water in the creek this morning and I won’t have to walk as far.

Cairns. Stone men. They reassure you that you’re on the right track.

Or, at least on a track. That other people have been here before. Not sure why they are here in this part of the creek. No drinking water here. Do they tell you to keep going? To have faith? It smells like crocodile here.

You would think it’s boring, walking on your own. But in fact it’s not. Not for me. There’s so much going on in my head, all I have to do is listen. It’s the perfect entertainment, and it’s all about me! I wonder how long you’ll have to walk for until your mind shuts up?

I almost burn my porridge again. I have given up making coffee since the instant powder I got is pish. The setting here makes me think of being stranded on a remote, uninhabited island. Which I kind of am. I wonder how long I could survive here? There’s plenty of drinking water, no real threat from wildlife. I’d have to learn how to fish, and figure out which plants are edible.

Ahead lies an easy day.

Only two hours to the next camping area, and from there a few more kilometers to a creek which hopefully has water. I’m getting picked up tomorrow moring at a place where I can’t camp, but I’d like to spend the night as close to there as possible, so I won’t miss the boat. It’s funny how I still worry about being late even though I get up at sunrise anyway, and they’ll even wait for me. Deeply ingrained habit.

I reach Nina Bay. Another tropical paradise. I better watch the coconut trees. There’s this cliche that coconuts kill more people in Australia than sharks.

I take a dip in the sea, eat my last apple, and set off to find drinking water. I see a coconut on the ground which looks as if it hasn’t been there for very long. I carefully approach it while watching the other, dangerous ones on the tree. It takes me about an hour to open it with my cheap knife and a rock.

It’s still good! What a success!

The hardest part was actually to find the actual nut and to get rid of the softer, fibrous stuff around it. I could definitely survive here.

Ok, coconut gets old way before eating one quarter of it. At least I have enough food now.

At the top of my last climb I meet two Australian walkers and we chat for a while. I give them half of my coconut, they offer drinking water. I stupidly decline. When I reach my last lonely beach of this trip, Blacksand Beach, and my last place to put up my tent I realize that the creek I was counting on is dry. I guess I won’t wash until the boat pick-up then.

I set up my tent on the beach under tea trees.

The map says they are tea trees (melaleuca), but to me they look like eucalyptus trees. This is not a designated camping area. No rat-boxes here, so I hang my food up in a tree.