We got up at around 7.30am, had juice, coffee and bacon, eggs and baked beans to give us the energy boost to do a couple of walks around the Gorge. We got away around 10am after Steve did some experimental plugging up of the hole in his tyre that seemed to do the job. We walked along the ridge top of the Gorge, back down to Trephina Creek and took our boots off to walk back through the mostly ankle deep, but cold, creek. It was absolutely stunning scenery with warm but not hot temperatures, although it's easy to see that in the height of summer it would be blisteringly hot.
Along the way, Steve and Sophie were up ahead and called out that they could see a snake swimming just in front of them. Being fairly knowledgeable about Australian snakes, Paul identified it as possibly a juvenile western brown snake, so we gave it the respect it justifiably deserved. It wasn't very big, perhaps 40cm long, and was dark grey in colour with a coppery coloured head and tail.
We continued on, stopped to put our boots back on and did the second of the shorter walks, the Panorama Trail, that wound its way up the other side of the gorge. This took about another hour, and in hindsight perhaps should be walked first, as the walk back to camp through the creek is a highlight.
Back at camp we had lunch and had a quiet little afternoon of not doing much at all. Paul tried his hand at his first ever damper, which was a great success with butter and honey. We then chopped up the veggies to go in the camp stew for the evening. A cast iron camp oven definitely imparts intangible flavours that can't be captured in a kitchen-based pot or slow cooker, we all agreed that it was the best one ever.
It was a much quieter night mouse-wise, with only a few heard scrabbling on the canvas during the night. One definitely did get in and took about half an hour for us not to find it at all. That makes it a bit harder to fall asleep, but it seems to have got away.
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