Monday 22 February 2010

Lake St Clair, Weekend Adventure



After our first day picking at Bill and Wendy's Chris and I went off for the weekend to Lake St Clair, just north of Singleton. What a beautiful place this is - like somewhere that's dropped right out of a fairytale. We fell in love immediately and, though we couldn't bring ourselves to part with the $16 for the first night, promised ourselves that after one night out in the wilderness for free, we would return here for our second night.


The heat:
This weekend was ridiculous. Seriously. On Thursday (our picking day) the temperature had reached 41 degrees just as we stopped. This heat continued over the weekend and we really couldn't cope. On Friday, we were so hot that all we could do was read in the shade all day - but then it became too hot to even read. We couldn't wait to get to Lake St Clair so we could at least cool down by swimming. We were so hot on Saturday (even after swimming in the lake) that we drove back into Singleton- the nearest town and practically all the way back to Bill and Wendy's in Broke - just so we could sit in the air-conditioned car for a bit and buy a cheap ice-cream from McDonalds - ridiculous. We were too hot to do anything else!

TOO HOT!

While feeling sorry for ourselves for being European and unable to deal with such heat, we did enjoy watching all the families playing around in the water - this place is a haven for people with speed boats and jetskis. There were a lot of local families from the mining town, Singleton, enjoying the last weekend of the Summer Holidays as well as the Australia Day weekend.




Chris cooking up our steak dinner before the tornado...


The tornado:
Wow. We have never experienced anything like this. This day was as calm as could be wind-wise. No breeze whatsoever. Imagine our surprise then when the strongest wind EVER ever came from nowhere in NO time. No warning, nothing. Everything blew away - our wine glasses, our wine BOTTLE, pots, pans, our boxes with our camping stuff in! Everything except the steaks and mash potato which we hastily shoved in the car! I had to spend the next half hour salvaging all our camping stuff from people's windshields (knives and forks!) and underneath their cars!

Weirdest thing ever. It was such strong wind, we couldn't believe. It must've been a tornado caused by all the pressure of the hot weather. Wow. Weird and amazing.

More amazing wildlife - we saw many parrots
in the trees directly above us


Chris goes fishing

... but no catch








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