Day 161 16/5/14 – El Questro Station WA

The boys have been pretty keen to go horse riding since we hit the road and this looked like a pretty cool place to do it. We signed them up for the 10am class and headed out to Zeebeedee Springs, a thermal spring, to start the day. This place is really cool (I’ll spare you the corny joke) as you have 28oC water bubbling up from underground and down a series of waterfalls while you sit in a rare palm forest (or is it a plantation?) There are about 15 pools but there was a tour bus in so we had to invade somebody else’s until they were give there marching orders by their guide, who must have been taking his leadership classes from the Gestapo. As they filtered out we relaxed to the bubbling sound of waterfalls all around us. It was pretty damn good! I wanted to stay longer but we had to go back for the cowboy lesson.

They were a picture as they headed off for the stables. 5 months is a long time, in growing terms, for two young boys with both of them looking like Forest Gump with their ankles clearly visible. To make things worse they didn’t have belts so they had fashioned one each using bits of rope!

They were excited to say the least and were bursting at the seams as Chris, the lead cowboy (sorry he is American so he used spaghetti western terminology), bought the horses into the yards. It wasn’t long before they were saddled up and with the boys on board we lead them out of the yard. We lead them for a lap of the paddock before Chris took them one at a time for a short trot.

For those who have never trotted a horse it is a pretty disconcerting feeling as it bounces along under you and you are in turn bounced inordinately on top of it. Jacko looked like he was kind of having fun as he felt his spine disappear behind his ears a couple of times but Sam had no idea what to do and at one stage I was almost certain he was going to end up on his head he was on such a lean!

Note the angle Sam is sitting at!

With the riding part over they helped to wash the horses down and you could already start to see a bit of a link between them and the animals.

Just as we were leaving the stables a Jayco drove down the drive way and the boys were off in a flash after it, as their BFF Finn had re-appeared! They were having problems with their fridge and after a quick look knew it was beyond me. Finn hung around until lunch when they headed off to a private camp site down the river with a couple of other families.

After lunch we headed off to El Questro Gorge. The gorge is pretty narrow so even though it was a pretty warm day and the sun was high in the sky we were walking in the shade, making it even more enjoyable! We rock hopped our way to halfway pool, which funnily enough is half way along the track. We had a quick swim and then scrambled our way to the top of the rock that forms a rather difficult part of the walk. We decided not to continue on but rather to have a bit of fun swimming in the pool, diving off the rocks The water was so incredibly clear and refreshing!

 

In the afternoon we headed down to their camp and had a couple of relaxing beers as the kids run amuck without any worry about cranky grey nomads giving us the eye! Note: Grey nomads as a whole really enjoy having the boys around but there seems to be one at every camp ground that sits there giving us the eye as the boys run/ride/climb/throw/be boys – so far I have avoided sharing my opinion about their evil eye with them, but time will tell if I can continue to restrain myself!

It had been another busy day so we left the serenity of the private camp and headed to our camping area where a quick dinner was had and we were all asleep at the drop of a hat.