Mount Clear

Speaking of enchanted places, a couple of weeks ago Chris, my brother David and I went down to the Mt Clear camping ground at the southern-most tip of the Namadgi National Park. It's one of the few bits of the park that escaped the bushfires of 2003. It was a cold, sunny day. There was a ranger down there having lunch when we got there, who told us that this was her favourite place in the park and that she often came there to have lunch. After she left, there was no-one about but us. We had a delicious picnic of cold meats, cherry tomatoes, olives, hummous, cheeses and fresh bread cut from a crusty loaf baked that morning. And of course, a good bottle of Sauvingon Blanc and a flask of hot coffee. (The wonder of food culture in Australia is that typical Mediterranean foods took so long to take off here.)

Anyway, we went for a wander by a little stream murmuring gently and saw numbers of kangaroos looking like they'd just stepped off a penny. Some birds made themselves visible to us, which was one of the reasons we went there, but it was really the wrong time of day. I so wanted to stay there but we would have needed a lot more in the way of warm clothes after the sun slipped behind the hills. A wonderful day, to be repeated as soon as possible.