Back from Eden return to work

Camping at Eden was fantastic, just what I needed. Even more so after the car journey up, traveling almost 5 hours with the heater on so as to cool the engine. This was after a kmart auto mechanic told us we'd be fine. Nothing wrong with our radiator. Right. Lucky for us *the* Cann River mechanic was open on a Saturday. He took one look at our radiator and said it needed replacing. We stayed overnight in Cann River while our friends drove on, some had already made it to Eden (we all left at the same time). We arranged for our friend Mark to come back and get us the next day (3 hour return trip), our car would not be ready until Tuesday.

We stayed in the Ben Boyd National Park. A really nice spot not far from the coast. We had goannas, possums and wallabies in our camp scavenging for leftover food. The goannas would eat whole fish carcasses, yuck. While driving into Eden I also saw two lyrebirds. They quickly run away off into the bush. We saw and heard a lots of other birds including bowerbirds, wonga pigeons, kookaburras, currawongs and more.

Despite advice not to do so I went snorkeling using a tegaderm patch over my exit site. On the first attempt I used 2 patches doubled over and it seemed to work - I only swam for 15 minutes though. The next time I went swimming I tried it with 1 patch and went for longer (an hour). It didn't work and my exit site bandage was wet. Salt water is good for wounds so I really don't think it matters much - just as long as nothing nasty got in.

I'm glad I went because while I was snorkeling I saw more than I have ever seen before (usually only swimming in Vic waters): black stingrays, two types of jelly fish, snapper, a parrot fish, sweep, old wife and a port jackson shark. The shark was dead.

My partner Greg, a spearo freediver type, got us dinner nearly every night. He caught leatherjackets, Australian salmon, blue, red and banded morwong, catfish and some abalone. Tim and Bel, friends from Melbourne, traveling around in the area, also stopped by for a fishy dinner a couple of nights.

There were plenty of kids to keep us entertained. We got some of them to pose for a kid police line up.

The drive back was so much nicer with the new radiator, we could even drive with the air conditioning on. It took us around 7.5 hours to get back home, compared with the 10 hours it took to get to Cann River on the way there!

Update: I wrote to Kmart and they gave me a refund for the radiator work they charged me for. Bravo for being quick to respond to my complaint.