Night of the Hungry Possums

Stayed a night at Lake St Clair National Park en route to Strahan and the west coast. This is an alpine area which MB thought would be cooler as the word "alpine" suggests. Well it couldn't have gone below 20c overnight and there were bushfires in the region so lots of smoke and ash. Lake St Clair is at the southern end of the Overland Track which starts at Cradle Mountain.

The camping area was very busy with all sorts, trekkers from overseas and grey nomads etc. The camaraderie is wonderful, met lots of other travellers, many of whom had driven down from Devonport (from SA, Vic Qld etc). Some folks from Adelaide were bemoaning the lack of mainland newspapers and were appalled at the quality of food shops, apparently at a store somewhere on the west coast one could find 15 types of gravy mix, but no legs of lamb. MDR has now dubbed the west coast "Gravyland". Our Maui campervan was a hit with our neighbours who all came inside to check it out. One of our neighbours had a custom made camper trailer which looked very space age.

MDR & MB did get a chance to do a 90 min walk around part of the lake, up to a platypus hide, however water level was very low so didn't see any platypi, did spot a black faced possum however.

It was a hot night there so dinner was al fresco on the campervan outdoor table, MDR cooked up our King Island porterhouse while MB did some garlic mash, salad and beans. While eating their dinner a black possum started sneaking up towards MB, luckily MDR spotted it and tried to chase it away, the possum though wasn't shy so MDR had to tap it on the nose with a rock to move it on. These possums are really fat, quite tame and obviously very well fed by the tourists. One of these little buggers jumped on our neighbours' dinner table while they were eating and tipped it over, then started eating all the food that had fallen.
Next morning MDR & MB set off for Strahan and the Gordon River.