21st December - Out of Africa

Camping, but not as we know it ! Mark, the Flour Cask bay propietor, met us off the ferry with our 4WD Mercedes and took us to our trailer tent. We spend the next week under canvas but with an ensuite double bedroom with solar powered electricity and hot water and a kitchen/dining/living room looking out across our very own valley which includes a large lake and ends in sand dunes, beyond which is the sea. At night, when the wind stops blowing (whch is not often as we are on an island in the Southern Ocean), we can hear the surf. There is one other human habitation in sight, about two kilometres away on the dunes and seemingly unoccupied at present so at night there is absolutely no light other than the stars and no sound other than the strange birds and the scufflings of who knows what under the trailer.

One particular bird sits in a tree in a copse beside the tent and calls for hours at dusk and again at dawn. It sounds like R2D2 from Star Wars but we discovered later is what is known locally as a magpie, allegedly witha flute like song - presumably one played by a psychotic flautist with no musical training. We grew very fond of it however.

We also share the site with kangaroos, cockatoos, plovers, lizards and a tiger snake, the discovery of which was a bit of a shock and we began to walk more carefully through the long grass. As promised it seems to have been more frightened than us and we didn't see it again.