After a breakfast we jumped in the car and drove to Barrington Tops, a World Heritage Area, where we had been told the walking and hiking was good. The walk we chose was to take us through forest, past some lovely rock pools and streams, to a viewing point where you can see back over the entire area.
Early in the walk, we came across some large friendly birds that looked like turkeys and then a rather deadly brown tree snake. Once bite and your dead in about an hour.
The weather was hot and humid but the forest kept us cool. We saw a brown snake early on and after an hour branched off the main track down to a stream where we paddled. John cooled off in the water.
We dried off and rejoined the track, taking a second branch half an hour later down to some sparkling rock pools. Fiona paddled and John took a swim.
After joining the main track again, we heard some rumbling in the distance. John thought it sounded like mining explosions from one of the near by mines. Fiona thought it sounded more like thunder. Fiona was not wrong. As we walked on the Thunder moved closer. Soon the skies darkened and the air grew very humid. The rain began to fall. After ten minutes the storm was well under way with almost constant thunder and lightening and monsoon rains.
We decided to stop and shelter under some trees, but after half an hour we were just getting cold. So we decided to walk on. It was then that John noticed a small leach on his arm!! We had not expected leaches. Anyway, he managed to scrape it off. As the rain fell, we decided it was time to turn around and walk back. Fiona’s top was now soaking, so we stopped so she could change it. After changing her top, Fiona noticed she too had a huge Leach on her sock. On closed inspection it had managed to get through the sock and was attached to her ankle. This was not good. After freaking out a bit, John managed to get it off, however, we took off her shoe, only to find six others attached to her foot. We ripped off the sock which worked. After checking the other shoe we sound the same. A second sock was ripped off. Fiona was now bleeding and we were both beginning to panic. We managed to get Fiona’s shoes back on. John then checked himself. He also had them on his legs and ankles. He managed to get them off.
After calming ourselves down, we began to sprint out of the forest, realizing that we had two hours of this before we would be back to the car. We had to keep stopping every five minutes to check for and detach he little sods. They seemed to be leaping at us every time we stopped. It was a terrible predicament to be in. John ran behind Fiona, watching the backs of her feet whilst Fiona checked the fronts.
After running for a hour was came across the side track to the stream. We took the track and reached the stream which was out of the forest. We stripped off checking ourselves for any more leaches. Luckily we only had a couple on our ankles and on our shoes. We bathed our legs and washed out John’s socks.
After a while, Fiona put on John’s socks (due to her shoes having a lower ankle support and hence allowing more leaches in). We jogged through the last half of the track, by which time the rain had stopped and the leaches were less active. On the was back we realised that, in all the commotion, John had lost his sun glasses. We looked for them but were unable to find them.
We reached the car, emotionally drained, feeling invaded and knackered. We drove to a nearby town, East Gresford, looking for petrol and a police station so John could get a police report about his glasses for the insurance. Scott, the local bobby was very helpful and assured us that the leaches were not harmful, just disgusting.
We went shopping, cooked a meal and watched a few DVD’s. We both slept badly, thinking about the leaches and watching the lightening through the blinds. We both felt itchy all night.
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