The woman in charge – Wendy – picked me up at the caravan park at 7:30.

There’s a minimum of two people, so because I was on my own, I had to wait until someone else booked a walk.  Fortunately for me, Mary and Moira, booked tonight, so I got to go out with them instead of a family on Friday.

Wendy drove to Nightcap National Park, and gave us a bit of an educational spiel as she did.  Apparently the volcanic eruption that gave us Mt Warning and the surrounding mountains and hinterland was cause by the East Australia hotspot – a place where magma is forced up at weak points in the crust.  The hotspot doesn’t move, but the continent does, so periodic eruptions happened down the east coast, creating a little line of mountains.

We stopped on the side of the road to look at some glow worms, which was pretty amazing.  They were strung out in a little line in an alcove by the side of the road, little points of light that looked like stars.

We put on the night vision goggles when we reached a campsite.  It’s like wearing a pair of binoculars – you adjust the large focus and leave it, but you constantly need to adjust the fine focus when you’re looking for the animals.  It also messes with your depth perception – we all stumbled into each other more than once.  We also used infra-red torches, which look completely dark but are a nice little circle of light in night vision.  Obviously, my camera was unable to see anything, so the following photos are courtesy of Wendy’s night vision camera.

First up – me with the night vision goggles on:

They’re heavier than you’d expect.

This a long-nosed bandicoot we found at the corner of the campsite:

We had to keep quiet because even without torches, most animals will scurry away from the noise.  But bandicoots didn’t seem to care – this one was at the corner of a campsite where people were laughing and talking and didn’t seem bothered by it.  We saw another one later in the trek that actually ran between us, it was so unconcerned by our presence.

A great barred frog:

Never would have seen this guy without the eye-shine.  That’s what we were looking for – little glints of light that were animals’ eyes.

This a pademelon – a type of small wallaby – with a joey:

Don’t you just love the name, though?  It’s pronounced ‘paddy-melon’.

We went for a walk down a dirt road, and saw a leaf-tailed gecko and a tree mouse running through the branches.  Eventually we turned back to the campsite, and discovered an enormous carpet python around the barbecue.  We skirted it carefully, and went looking around the edges of the camp site.

We found this tawny frogmouth on a post:

And this short-eared possum in a tree:

It looks like she’s got a joey in her pouch – see how it’s bulging?

Then it was time to take off the goggles and wrap things up.  We went to the top of Minyon Falls and looked at the stars while drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and eating a gigantic cookie.  I was dropped off at the caravan park at around midnight, and went straight to bed.