25 March, 2011 - Lane Cove National Park, Sydney, NSW

We are now set up further down the camp under gums, mission all accomplished by 10.15 this morning, by which time the laundry was all on the line and we relaxed for the rest of the morning reading the day’s news. With the NSW election tomorrow, most of the newspapers are full of scandal and supposition, and early guesses at the outcome, as happens in all political elections. We have been following it all and will be interested to learn the outcome late tomorrow or on Sunday.

Our decision regarding the direction to set out after we leave here has been cunningly solved, at least for now. We have secured our site for a further week and so will not be leaving here until 5^th April at the earliest. I feel quite relieved about that, however we will have to be careful we are not so relaxed about the extra time that we still fail to squeeze all our must-dos into that remaining time. 

Eastern Water Dragon

After lunch we set out for a two hour walk out into the National Park, the edge of which we are camped. The pathway took us down from the very extensive camp, through scrub and bush, to the Lane Cove River. We followed the river bank down until we came to the weir, and then returned by the same route. We saw ducks, and rails, butterflies of yellow, of brown and of orange, kookaburras, noisy miners, magpies and lorikeets, and mostly many many eastern water dragons. They were most put out that we should trespass on their pathways, initially freezing and pretending that they were not there, and finally and reluctantly scurrying away.

It was a lovely walk and we may well do a more extended version should we find ourselves at a loss for things to do before the date we are due out.