Leeches Creep Me the Fudge Out!

We spent the last 2 nights in one of the Nymboi-Binderay National Park in New South Wales, it’s about a 65km drive from Coffs Harbor on the coast. I decided we had to go there when we stopped in the information center in Coffs, one of the brochures I was looking at said that there was a campsite in the park called Platypus Flat where one could glimpse one of the elusive critters in the wild at dawn or dusk along the banks of the Nymboida River. This has been a goal of mine since coming to the country and I couldn’t pass up the chance, especially since it was only $10 to camp there for the night. There was one other little note about Platypus Flat in the brochure, the road to get there is unsealed and has very steep sections and is not suitable during wet weather. It had been raining for 2 days already… I pointed this out to Carly and we both looked at each other and shrugged, how bad could it be?

The drive out to the park was pretty darn good. We drove through a little hippie outpost called Bellingen where the first building I saw was a motel called Rivendell (from Lord of the Rings). We stopped to fill up our propane tank there as we had not filled up to this point and thought we must be running on fumes. The gas station/auto dealership attendant/owner was pretty nice, ribbing Carly when she went up to ask if they refilled propane tanks (they call propane just “gas” and they call gas “petrol” or just “unleaded”). He said they did fill them but he had no way to measure how much he put in. He said “I’m not gonna argue with you” and Carly told him “We’re not arguers”. She came back and relayed this to me and I said what the heck. He guessed it was about a third full still, which was more than I figured so I agreed and he charged me for two thirds of a tank. We also passed a golf course that had a large sign saying “unlimited golf after 2pm - $12” which was pretty tempting.

From Bellingen we had a pretty steep section of highway up to Dorrigo where we passed a couple of nice waterfalls and had to stop a couple times as the road was one lane due to construction to fix massive holes on the cliff side of the road that would probably send your car rolling a few hundred meters down the sheer side of the mountain if you were the person unlucky enough to discover them. Eventually we made it to our turn off onto the Moonpar Forest Drive where I stopped the van to check the signs. They showed that it was 15km (9 miles) to the campsite and they repeated the warnings of the brochure saying very plainly that if it is wet do not pass go and do not collect $200. This time we looked at each other and said, well we’ve come this far, might as well see how we go. At first the road seemed pretty decent mainly because it was still private land but soon after we passed the sign marking the entry into the National Park and we came to our first obstacle. There was a tree in the road with a trunk about as big around as my thigh. Needless to say, we started to get a little uneasy about our adventure but we both hopped out of the van to assess the situation. We decided to try and move the tree to one side of the road so we could pass and as soon as we lifted it up it started to break on one side. After a couple of pushes we snapped it off and I was able to carry it off the road and on we went.

The next difficulty came a few kilometers down the road. We started a climb up the road that under the conditions was less than pleasant. I was in second gear and the van was chugging to get up the slope and I could feel the tires slip every so often on the soft muddy road. When we got to the top I thought “well that must have been the steep part and we’ll be alright if that’s the worst of it”. When we were about three quarters of the way there we turned a corner and I saw the last sign on earth that I wanted to see, a steep decent sign, for the next 700 meters. The fact that this was marked and the previous sections of road were not did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling to say the least. 700 meters never felt so long in my life, probably because I could have walked down faster than I drove it. When we reached the bottom we let out the breath that we had been holding without realizing it. Surely there can’t be anything worse than that.

I turned the corner and there was a river flowing across the road in front of us. Literally, there was water running across the top of the road. REALLY?!?!! At this point I was about fed up with Platypus Flat and we hadn’t even made it there yet. I got out of the van once again and stomped down to see whether we could get across. I walked out to the middle of the covered section and it was about ankle deep so I got back into the van and said “Let’s do it” and drove on through. Up a couple more hills and over a bridge, dry this time but only a couple feet at most over the river that was basically white water rapids, and we made it!

We thought there couldn’t possibly be anyone else stupid enough to try and drive this sorry excuse for a road that day but sure enough there was a 4WD SUV already at the campsite when we rolled down the hill. From the looks on their faces as we drove by they had thought the same thing and that we were doubly stupid for attempting it in our campervan. I can’t really disagree with them.

We pulled up and chatted with them for a few minutes, Carly got made fun of for saying Dorrigo like Dorito rather than Dorry-go which she was not happy about, then we went to the other end of the campground and decided we were not moving the van until the weather cleared.

After hugging each other for a few minutes just glad we didn’t kill ourselves trying to get to this place, I suggested we go on a hike to a nearby track I had read about in the aforementioned brochure. The description is as follows: “Red Cedar Track is an easy 300m circuit through some of the last remaining wild stands of red cedar on Dorrigo Plateau. Turns off one kilometre (that’s how they spell it here) east of Platypus Flat.” Sounds nice right? It’s not.

We started off and quickly realized that the one km from Platypus Flat was completely uphill. Similar to the 700m steep incline we came down earlier only opposite and walking, and it had started to rain again. We made it to the track eventually and started down the loop enjoying the large trees and solitude. It seemed as if nobody had been down this way for ages. About a third to halfway through the loop while I was reading a sign about King Orchids that grew on the trees here, I glanced down at my boots and noticed something crawling up my sock toward my exposed calf (I had brilliantly decided to wear shorts on this “easy” jaunt). It was very thin, no wider than a piece of angel hair pasta and about an inch long, and moving like a determined inchworm. I recognized it instantly as a leech, far nearer to my bare skin than I would like it to be. The reason I recognized it as such was because a week ago we had stayed at another campsite where a couple had come hiking out of the woods shortly after we arrived and the man (who had also been wearing shorts and hiking in the rain) had realized once he got back that there was one stuck to his leg having a nice meal. I was not about to let this one make a snack out of me so I flicked it off of my leg…and it stuck to my hand, now trying to snack on a finger. I shook it off and told Carly of my findings. She promptly tucked her jeans into her socks so there was no easy snacking on her. I meanwhile had spotted a few more moving up my legs and decided after flicking them off to move a bit quicker. At this point it started to rain a good bit harder and we quickened the pace even more. I felt something on my face and ran my hand across my forehead to discover that one of the buggers was on my eyebrow! At this point I was officially creeped the fudge out and began constantly checking my ankles and calves and Carly’s as well. She made me flick the ones that were on her off because she didn’t want to, while I had her checking my raincoat hood for more unseen hitch hikers. We made it out of the rain forest and both gave each other a good checking over to make sure we were clear of blood suckers at which point I discovered another one about 3 times bigger than the original making its way up my shoe. Great not only are there more of them, they’re getting bigger!

We left a bit quicker than we came in and after shaking off the last of the leeches headed down to the river to check for Platypi as it was almost dusk at this point. We didn’t see any after searching for a little bit, figuring that the current was too fast since the river was swelled a bit due to the rain. On the way back Carly noticed a red spot on the back of my sock and triple checked before informing me that I may not have gotten all of the leeches off. I peeled down the sock and sure enough there was a little cut that wouldn’t stop bleeding because the leech saliva has an anticoagulant that prevents the wound from clotting while they feed. There was no sign of the leech, just its handiwork, which I think I’m grateful for. After all of my vigilance one of them had gotten to me anyway. I was less than pleased.

We got back to the campsite to find that another car had arrived while we were out and set up shop basically right in front of us, taking the fire pit we had intended to use. This was initially pretty annoying but we made friends with Craig and Jill, a couple in their late 40s from Coffs Harbour, quickly and made the best of it. They come to Platypus Flat quite often and they had actually had an accident on the way in to the camp. Craig lost control and slid into the wall blowing out one of the tires and messing up the fender pretty good. They were determined to make it there though and after changing the tire continued to the campground where they were planning on staying for a few days. We hung out with them under the tarp they had over their tent and ended up staying up to 1:00 drinking their wine and beer with them. We contributed a bottle of wine that we had and some chocolate from the factory that we still are working through.

Yesterday it rained again for most of the morning so we figured we’d stay for another night. Carly did a bit of knitting and got some pointers from Jill and we played some Frisbee when it cleared up in the afternoon. We had a fire last night with Craig and Jill before going to bed a good deal earlier than the night before. The trip out this morning was less stressful than the one in except for the steep ascent up the hill. There was a horse in the road when we got almost to the end that startled us both. The horse took off down the road for about a hundred feet before scrambling up a hill.

We are now at a campervan park in Byron Bay recharging for the night and tomorrow it’ll be back to the beach for some sun and to watch some good surfing hopefully. Moral of the story: don’t go hiking in shorts in the rainforest while it’s raining.