“This one’s good,” Fiona said, reading it out to us. “Sunning ourselves on the beach, We weren’t very far out of reach, Of what we thought was a rock, But was really a CROC! … Boy, did we clear the shore! It was 4 meters in length, And swam with great strength, The fish were a jumpin’, And our hearts were a thumpin’ … So, if you want to be cool, Don’t be a fool … Drive to Eliot Falls, where you wont lose your balls! …”
We walked south along the shore for about half a kilometer and reached the entrance to the first of the caves. A few bats flew in and out, and we went in for a closer examination. The entrance was narrow, and the cave beyond wasn’t much wider. We stopped not too far in. The bats, clearly not amused with our presence, began to fly to the rear of the cave. There were thousands of them! Then, seemingly running out of room at the back of the cave, they exploded out of the dark void and swarmed to the exit, with us between them and their intended goal of escape. Glen grabbed his head and ducked. I tactically drew back, but not before being pelted a couple of dozen times by the hail of winged fluff. So much for echolocation.
A few of the barrage fell to the water, and were now exhaustedly sitting on rocks on the ground recovering from their unplanned bath. “Isn’t he sweet,” Glen said, looking down at the panicked bat.
They really were; small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, not quite vicious enough to inflict any real harm. Perfect. We stood for a bit, admiring our new friend, but were taken aback to see two little orange mites that went careening across its body and disappeared into its modest expanse of fur.
“What was that?”
“Don’t know.” I looked around. “But, uh, they seem to be covering the walls.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Good idea.”
We wandered around, examining the other caves and cliffs above, and later decided to take a quick swim. Well, I decided to. I bravely – or is it foolishly – strode out to knee high water and plopped down to splashed around in my best “I’m not a wounded animal struggling in water” manner, but strategically retreated soon after when spooked by a menacing looking patch of seaweed. It was a beautiful beach for a swim, but definitely not worth the risk of encountering a croc.
Glen, in the meantime, was excitedly bounding about because he had found a forgotten, or abandoned, pair of thongs sitting by the boatshed. Thongs, I would like to point out here, specifically for any Americans thinking the same thing I though the first time this word was encountered in this strange context, is the Australian term for flip flops. “One of my thongs broke, so this is great!” he said. Seriously, you have never seen a man so excited about thongs before. Not these kinds of thongs, at any rate.
Our next intended point of destination was Iron Range National Park. We left Captain Billy behind, and began the drive south on the Southern Bypass Road to the Peninsula Developmental Road, where we would then make a left onto Frenchmans Road and take this to the Main Portland Roads Track and into Iron Range.
