On Promontory peaks

G'day you much appreciated readers! :D

I've been flat out diving into new adventures - remind you, to my greatest delight, I happen to be on this road trip right now that I'd been wanting to go on since tender teenage years. But here is this two hour time frame that I got to recall another event of the past that I feel deserves a report.

What happened after the Rainbow Gathering?

There was a little group of Rainbows that didn't want to end the dream just yet, or simply didn't have anywhere better to be, or rather both. After the Paradise Valley was completely cleaned out and only the bare wooden structures of our shelters were left behind, there were Pumpkin, Mystery, Esteve, Jemma, Jelmer, Tess, Max, Sue and my humble self who kind of stranded at Trevor's place.

You have no idea how absolutely wacky it felt to be in a house again. So warm in there! So clean in there! Where are all my layers of jackets? No need to wear them, what is this strange feeling of mobility I got now? And cooking in a real kitchen? Internet? And having a bathroom - a HOT SHOWER?! Crickey Jeez, it was truly sensational. So much appreciation, I didn't know what to do with it.

So we had a couple of days of Rainbow decompression at Trevor's place - just easing back into the "normal" world. Cleaning up Trevor's house and backyard, going for walks around beautiful Tambo River and up the hills, making up our minds where to go next, watching Game of Thrones and playing boardgames, and cooking up the most ridiculously scrumptious dinners every night. Day after day we just found it too hard to leave, because a life like this and in such good company is very hard to abandon. Once more, thank you Trevor, and everyone else.

Eventually Jelmer got on his motorbike and said Goodbye; Esteve, Mystery, Jemma squeezed into one car and Pumpkin joined me in Laurie and we drove down to Lakes entrance to catch up with Rowan and Nelli.... and nooo, now I realize I got no photo of Nelli at all :/ However, another night of playing boardgames and making clay stuff and feasting....

The scars of a hero - Esteve with his impressive (burned) thumb. He pulled a sleeping bag out of the campfire

Beautiful sea shells on 90 Mile Beach.

Pumpkin's artwork in the sand.

And there! A rainbow, of course!

But then it was time to stick to my own path - Wilsons Promontory was where I steered Laurie to. I stayed with Steve, a friend from ConFest, who lives in Inverloch near the Prom, and together, we went on a day trip to this absolutely stunning peninsula of National Park where beauty of nature is raised to a new level. Seriously it blew my mind!

And all the animals living there seem to be really comfortable having humans around - well, there are a lot of tourists. On the day we went it was relatively quiet - a Tuesday in winter. I had some amazing chances to take a very close look at some native animals. Emus

A sleepy blacktail wallaby

A wombat that had a quite special fair colour... he walked so close to me I could have touched him, and he wasn't scared at all

Lorikeets and Rosellas that went berserk when they spotted the bread we had - soon we were in a swarm of them, landing on us and fluttering all around, just trying to grab a bite...

And there, a Steve in his natural habitat ...

Squeaky Beach... yes it really squeaks.

... and has some grand rock formations to climb around on!

To watch the sunset we climbed on Mt. Oberon. I've never seen anything as drop-dead gorgeous as this. I'm running out of words here, I was just flabbergasted. We had brought instruments with us, and with the help of a young Melbournian lady who filmed us we played a song in front of this grand scenery. It's for my Sri Lankan friend Arqam who just got married -