Once we were sorted to leave Carol took one of the walky talkies and trudged to the top of the access road and once clear gave Ross the heads up to drive out of the reserve. It was a good thing we had adopted this plan as vehicles had started arriving to visit the wildlife park and sure as eggs we would have been confronted by one coming down. Excitement for the day done it was back on the main road and then down the secondary road that crosses the dividing range via Kangaroo Valley.
It was at that point we were confronted with climbing over Mount Cambewarra. A very steep, narrow and windy road up to the saddle and then the same down the other side. Once at the saddle we drove a couple of extra km to the summit and lookout and at some 678m were presented with excellent views out to the coast and Nowra. Then it was down the mountain to the smell of very hot brakes and the quaint little village of Kangaroo Valley. After a bit of a walk around checking out some of the crafty type shops it was across the very majestic olde world Hampden Bridge and then up the Kangaroo River Valley to our camp spot for the night at Bendeela Reserve.
The reserve itself is an absolutely brilliant place to camp – and best of all it was free with the only real restrictions being no fires and no pets. We found a nice sunny spot next to the river (not difficult given the size of the reserve. It is huge) and setup camp. First job was wombat poo patrol. Yep, there sure were a lot of wombats around with their very large burrows in the banks and ground in general. We even found one in the gravel access road making for a very deep pothole indeed. On our late afternoon walk we came across at least 20 that were out feeding their fat little faces.
It was however a lovely spot with the river and significant forest covered hills of the Morton National Park surrounding the area very pretty indeed. The brilliant location and perfect weather made for an excellent day and although there were quite a few people there when we arrived they were just weekend traffic and come dusk there was just us and one other couple in for the night – plus of course gazillions of wombats.
Funny thing for the day was the very large wombat whose piece of dirt we were on got a bit stroppy as the evening progressed. It would get under the van and rub its back on the axle cross members and the like which would start the van rocking quite noticably. At first we were concerned it might be damaging the van but after Ross (with torch in hand) checked out what it was doing it became evident the van would be ok. It did however leave lots of nice fresh piles of poo around reinforcing the point that it was his patch we were on. First time however we have been rocked to sleep by a wombat…
