I love that my girls have developed into full on bush walkers. They hardly even bother to pretend they don't like it any more. We left the car park with my day pack carrying supplied for the walk of about 2-3 hours, but they wanted to try out their new tramping packs so we re-distributed the gear and they both added their puffer jackets to their loads to flesh out the packs a little. It makes me chuckle to hear them make plans, that everyone needs some water and food in case they get lost, and a survival blanket. Obviously they've watched Tom and I pack for adventures on the lounge floor regularly.
The forest around Whirinaki is so lush, and so...... big. Our girls were interested in some of the history of this area, where native logging was taking place until the 1970s, when protests took place and there was violence between the greenies and local forestry workers reliant on the milling for employment.
After crossing a big puddle, our track became much smaller and less distinct, crossing with other trails. The girls quickly picked up that the track felt different, and we hadn't seen a marker for a while. It was great to be able to show them in real life, how important it is to be able to track back to where you last saw a marker, what features you've seen to navigate from. It turned out we had only gone a couple of hundred metres wrong from the puddle, where our trail turned and disappeared knee deep in the lagoon! So much rain recently saw the lagoon expanding it's banks by about 50 metres. Piggy backs required to sit on the seat islands of the viewing platform for lunch!
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