Wilson's Promontory, a conservatory located south east of Melbourne is often talked about by OCFers. Jon and I decided to go, despite the lack of numbers, especially after Kinetics (one of OCF's CGs) headed down there for a few days.
Before leaving the house, I did a short devotion where God revealed the verse "for only good men enjoy life to the full" - Proverbs 2:21, TLB.. which talked about adventrous living! Wow. I took it as God giving us the thumbs up for this trip cause that's exactly what we're doing. Praise God! Anyways..
On the 24th of November 2007, we departed Clayton around 5.30 in the morning, hoping to make it there just in time as the park opens at 8.30. Making a few stops and driver switches along the way. The Australian countryside is beautiful. Though similar scenes are available driving along the Malaysian roads, such as those located along the Titiwangsa Range, it's just different with the Australian roads. The roads themselves work a little different. Driving on a relatively narrow single lane "highway" the width of a country road has a speed limit of 100kmph. Scary.
It was a gloomy morning as we reached Tidal River where the park office was located. We had to get ourselves registered and permits obtained. A shuttle bus brought us to the foot of Mount Oberon served as a small favour 
for our 10.2 kilometer march to Sealer's Cove, ETA 3 hours. It's the nearest campsite. The others would've taken us much longer with nearest following Sealers Cove requiring another 2 hour hike. Given the number of days we planned to spend, Sealer's Cove was the most viable choice.
We reached Windy Saddle within 30-40 minutes. Apparently, it's where Josh and the "older" generation of OCFers were about 2-3 years before. The mistakenly thought that Sealers Cove is 300 meters away and made a dash for it. Of course, they never reached it as it was actually another 6.6 kilometers away. That leg would prove to be more difficult as it was a 2 hour walk downhill, serving as a bitter reminder for what's to come the next day, as every step me take going downwards is a step to climb. The last 2km leg wasn't so bad as there was a wooden path substituting the uneven natural path we endured for more than an hour and a half. It was pretty much false hope in the beginning as we couldn't be sure how much more we had to go before reaching our destination, being tired and all. We expected the path to last 5 minutes, instead it was a 30 minute stretch.
After a few impressive fresh water creeks, a bridge, a toilet, and about two hours and 30 minutes of persevering, we finally arrived at Sealer's Cove.
"Amazing" was the word Jon used to described the scene before us. It was a nice C shaped gulf with the combination of the nice sandy beach, beautiful blue waters and the hills in the background was a great reminder how great God is in creation such a place.
There was still another 10-15 minutes of walking to do to reach our campsite located north of the cove. Clean? You bet. Unlike our Malaysian campsites, the place seemed almost untouched. Campsites back home are too civilised, with cement bases for tent pitching, lights everywhere and so on. Here, the only visible structure was a waterless toilet and a handful of signs to point travelers to the right direction.
We took about 5 minutes to pitch up our tent. Then it was a quick lunch of Maggi noodles within the company of three parrots! One was bold in enough to land on my shoulder. What a fright it was at first, but wow.. it was cool. Soon the awe of their brilliant colours and tame gave way to how annoying they were.. trying to leech off our food and getting in the way when cooking. They were basically crows.. only prettier and colourful.
We took a couple of hours to nap. I only got 30 minutes of sleep the night before and spent the whole time in the city. When we woke up to got our gear setup to fish! Before that we took a dip, at Jon's insistence. But boy, the water sure was cold. At that point of the day the sun was already up, but even so, the waters were quite chilly. It was alright after awhile.. our bodies get used to it.
I enjoyed the camp food. It's different eating the usual crap in the outdoors.. somehow it taste much tastier. At night we had the classic menu of fried eggs, luncheon meat, sardines, baked beans and rice. Awesomeeeee. The next day for lunch we had a combination of beef and curry flavoured maggi noodles, plus a can of sweat chilli tuna and a can of olive lemon tuna.. plus 3 eggs. We wanted to get rid of the amount of things to carry.. that's why. Turn out to taste pretty good actually..
The Fishing Trip
We tried to fish in a few locations.. namely at the rocks and the second try was in deeper waters. The tide reseeds to a point half the cove becomes dry land. We walked out to the furtherest point possible to cast our lines. At my first throw there was already some strong nibbling. My most disappointing event was when I caught a fish, reeling it in, was able to clearly see it in the water but as it broke the surface of the water it managed to unhook itself. That would be the only most convincing time I almost landed a fish. The other times don't really count.
We went fishing again at night, this time in darkwater (fresh and sea water mixed together becomes darkwater). A two hour jigging session which yielded no results for me. Not even a nibble. Jon was more successful, at least his 
bait got taken a few times.
The next day we tried river fishing again for starters. I think we got the wrong bait.. the amusing thing is how we could see the fish chase our baits, checked it out.. and turned away! Crapppp! In a way it was a good thing the fish didn't take the bait. They were all fresh water puffer fish. I wouldn't have known how to take them off the hook without gloves. After an unsuccessful session we tried fishing on the beach. It was great.. we could see fishes jumping out of the water. Every time our baits are cast into the area where the fish were at, the whole school jumps out of the water. Quite cool. The uncool part is none of them took our baits.. again. Maybe it's the wrong bait.. or the wrong method. Hopefully we'll figure that out next time. Jon broke our losing streak by landing a palm size fish. Better than nothing I guess...
At this point my camera died. I dunno how.. but apparently water got in. Thank God for camera phones.
We finished fishing at 3pm, took an hour to cook, eat and pack up.. leaving paradise at 4pm. The walk back was torture. Well, of course.. two days of walking was bound to give us alot of muscle aches. We reached Mt. Oberon at 6.30pm. The problem was.. unknown to us the last shuttle bus left at 4.15pm.
At that point I thought me and Jon were really screwed this time. It's a long walk back to where the car is, especially with a full pack. And Jon's leg was getting swollen up for some reason. I decided to drop my gear and took a jog downhill. It was a great run.. seeing much wildlife on the way.. ant eaters, wallabies, parrots and so on. After more than 3 kilometers of jogging I finalely got to the car. Jon waited for 45 minutes. Ops. On the drive home we saw lots of rabbits and a few wombats (which were damn cute!). We got back to Clayton at 10.15am, got a quick shower before Jon, Charlene, Andrew, Bryan and I went to Rock Kung for a taste of civilisation once again.
Australian wildlife.. spot the wallaby in the last picture?
I might be coming back here again.. but next time I'd wanna take a week off to explore this place and other campsites around it a little more.
. Thank you for making it a special day. 
