The Kiwi Kid: Wilson's Promontory

I ended up giving Raquel and Lucas who were at the hostel a lift to Wilson's Promontory as they wanted to go camping. I knew I'd end up giving them a lift, before I arrived they had asked some other girls who were too self absorbed in their own bookcases* to really engage with anyone else. Dear Raquel is from Spain and staying with a family in Lorne on the Great Ocean Road who she opared for a few years ago, they had lent her camping bag, tent, sleeping mat, but somehow she also packed lots of other useless things and had way too much stuff, and even though she wanted to go camping, she lamented she would not be able to carry everything. Timo from Finland tried to council her to remove unnecessary items but alas everything was necessary. Earlier she had gone out to buy food for the trip, this included instant noodles even though she had no stove to cook them when camping, full loaves of bread, cup a soups etc, this was the result:

Raquel and Lucas ready for a 9km hike!

Raquel had met Lucas at the hostel and they decided to go camping together. Lucas had left some of his stuff and the hostel but still ended up carrying his shopping. Raquel had did manage to leave a bag at the visitors centre for safe keeping. Still I got them to their starting point and at least they won't go hungry. After seeing them off I had a walk over a peninsula to Squeaky Beach, because the sand so pure it squeaks, I looped back up over the peninsula for views over to a hill I was contemplating climbing, I sat down atop a big boulder and enjoyed the contemplation of the walk with dwindling intention of actually walking it. I was saved from any last desire to walk up hill by a family consisting of dad about 70+, daughter about my age and an aboriginal boy about 10. They weren't expecting to see anyone on the boulder and the first thing the dad said to me was then a person commits suicide they take their shoes off and take their watch off. I assured him my shoes and watch were still on. I thought he looked a bit like Clint Eastwood. Apparently they were going into a cave he had discovered through a tiny crack which lead under the next massive boulder. To get to the crack you had to shuffle along the side and not fall over the steep drop and then crawl in on your front, so I went inside a cave. Inside we found a cache like a time capsule someone had left and a note in a tin. We crawled further into the cave. I thought he was a very cool 70 something dad, after the cave and the scaring exit, which meant crawling head first on ones front out of the crack over the drop, I continued to walk with them back to Tidal River. He told me all about Simi, the boy and how they came to have him, he ran, surfed and was in a local athletics club, they lived in Franston which is further down from Mentone, near the Mornington Peninsular - a nice place to be. What a wonder encounter.

I went back to squeaky beach on the way back to Foster to collect some sand in a bottle. Back at the hostel there was a middle aged couple from Canada and John (why is everyone called John?) who was up to do some work, he also cooked a massive meal and I helped him eat it, so I had 2 dinners tonight. A longish day, tired but in a good way.

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