Don’t remember much about the trip to Sydney or why I chose to go back. One event stands out – I caught a ride one evening which left me off in a desolate place, well after dark. Further rides that night were not an option. I found a fair place to camp and tried with stunning failure to light a campfire, ate some cold munchies I was carrying and began to think about all of the deadly snakes that terrorize the jungles of Queensland and decided I wasn’t really all that tired. I started to walk and kind of got into a good stride. All though, there was a lot of physical exercise crewing, I hadn’t really walked more than 50 feet at a time and, even with my heavy pack, it felt pretty good. At one point, I came across a bunch of truck drivers who told me they were taking the state mandated time off to sleep, but these guys were talking and smoking and tossing back a few beers. We talked for a while, but they were going to be stopped for a while, so I kept on walking.
Sometime later, I began to hear rain up in the trees. It sounded reasonably heavy, but I wasn’t feeling any raindrops.
It took me a while to figure out that I was hearing a large group of koala bears climbing around and chewing leaves!