Monday, October 20, 2008

The Expedition...not the 4WD-Bomick's new adventure

On the weekend (on the eve of my birthday, Sept. 1) which is the first day of spring here Down Under and after months of hibernating during the freezing and bitterly cold winter plus having still those bouts with the so-called winter blues... and just listenin' to... ( NGEK! Ang haba naman yatang intro 'to... Hehehehe! ). My son Miko Jillan (JILLAN with a J... taken from Deep Purple's lead vocalist Ian Gillan) and I decided to go to Deep Creek Conservation Park near Cape Jervis for a camping and trekking expedition. According to DFEAH, "Deep Creek Conservation Park is home to a variety of flora and fauna. Conserving 4452 hectares including 18 kilometers of coastline, the park provides spectacular views of Backstairs passage, Kangaroo Island and the rugged Deep Creek valley plus extensive walking/hiking trails including the world-famous Heysen Trail."
On the first day we looked for an excellent place where we could set up the camp and pitched our tent there.

Before dinner, I taught my son how to cook goat curry while the rest of the meat plus the innards were put aside for marinating and grilling as "pulutan".

The dinner was superb but unluckily just after an hour the weather changed from bad to worse. Strong wind, heavy rain, lightning, thunder and all ran havoc around us for the whole night. It's good though that the tent was sturdy enough to take the lot and we were able to pitched it intentionally that the bush would be around it as a safety and precautionary measure. The plan of having a campfire was binned but we instead opted to listen to the radio broadcast of the Australian Football game which worked out well anyway as we were so tired from the trip and preparing the site... so, sleeping was the best thing to do that time.



In the morning, there were still some patches of rain and strong wind but that did not stop us from venturing outside for a day hike which was originally planned as a two-day trek in which we were going to leave our main camp/tent and go trekking and would just pitch our smaller hiking tents wherever we would be just before the day breaks but because the weather was playing tricks on us and soon becoming an awful one then we decided not to pursue the trekking expedition for our own safety. By the way, we were given a few minutes of sunshine just before we head out from the camp so we decided to take some photos... relaxin' before the hike and just about to go for the hike.




During the hike, we saw some kangaroos loitering around the vicinity and I told my son, pointing to one of them that it will be the next one to be marinated and grilled for pulutan. The kangaroo hastily jumped away from us as if it understood what I was talking about and probably it did. Hehehehe! Mala kay nabagat mi ulit farther down the road eh malumsion pa... sobrang nerbyoso man yadto na animal! Hahahaha! Just jokin'...
Late afternoon when the rain subsided, we went for a short fishing trip along the coast and there were big rocks where we could stand and throw our fishing lines from there. The rocks were so slippery because of the recent heavy downpour and I stumbled twice (gurang na, maluya na an tuhod)... well, literally... that's what you call "Rock and Roll"... not bad for an ageing rocker, hey! O diri pagtinawahan an nag-gugurang na si Bomick kay kun magkaburusong kamo. Hahahaha!
Alright then, so that was this year's expedition and hopefully will have another one soon to hug "Mother Nature" once again...