Old People, Young People and the Interminable Closures

There is a lot less people sitting around the picnic tables at Greenpatch campground in Booderee National Park for the annual South Coast/ACT sea paddlers Christmas event than previous years. Some regular attendees are busy elsewhere, however three friends are not in attendance due to serious health issues. We are laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company yet there is a sombre pall over the group. It’s only when your health is gone that you realise how great a gift good health was. Don’t wait do that thing that you have always wanted to do, just don’t wait.

Doug and I didn’t even have kayaks with us, which is unusual. Most years, we do one or two really good kayak trips over the Christmas event. We’ve come up the coast in our new van that is not fully camperized – truthfully, it’s not even half camperized yet but it does have some wiring, batteries, a couple of little fans (a blessing as it is so humid), a nicely covered and insulated floor and a mattress but no roof racks.

We had spent the hot and humid part of the day on an 18 kilometre walk to Stony Creek and a couple of unnamed lookouts about a kilometre NE of Steamers Beach. These were the only tracks we had not walked in the National Park but Stony Creek Road was closed, because this is Australia and something is always closed. Instead of some driving and short walks that we would have done if Stony Creek Road was accessible, we did a long walk that included the bushwack which is mandatory when the road is closed. Such is life in the nanny state that is Australia.

We got down to Stony Creek and washed the sweat off in a small pool where cooler fresh water mixed with warmer salt water. I’ve paddled into Stony Creek and I remember the deep water (deep being a relative term) channel being very narrow. Basically, you have to paddle in right beside a rock cliff with a breaking reef on the other side. It was really interesting to look at the channel from land on a day with northerly conditions. It looked a wee bit scary and I certainly wouldn’t be paddling my composite boat in under those conditions.

The following day we drove out to Nowra to meet my newly red pilled nephew to rock climb. My nephew climbs the way he talks – quickly, abruptly, forcefully. There’s a lot a younger more dynamic climber can teach an older static climber, but the opposite also holds true. Staying alive and injury free is a pretty worthwhile lesson and leaping from jug to jug only works until it doesn’t.