Camping in Katoomba - Part II

The next day (this is the 3rd), we started with several exciting small stream crossings...

And found large termite (?) mounds...

And an awesome stick bug!

On our hike in the Grosse Valley, Jen had seen a Wallaby while Dave was off going to the bathroom. Dave was just starting to reconcile himself with the fact that he may leave Australia without ever seeing a wallaby, when we saw a whole family of them!

We had actually arrived at our 3rd night's camping spot quite early in the day, and it was like pitching our tent in the wallaby exhibit of the zoo. It was in a lovely meadow that had about 8 or 10 wallaby who stayed quietly grazing for the rest of the day!

You can't really see very well from the photos, but wallaby are a lot less cuddly than I had been imagining. I suppose the only kangaroos and wallaby's I've really seen are cartoon depictions of them, which tend to make them a little rounder and less muscular than they actually are. In person, their legs, of course, are quite muscular, but their front leg muscles are also ridiculously large in proportion to their head, making them look like stunted alien boxers.

Since we had so much extra time, we went on a long day hike during which we saw a grey kangaroo. He's significantly smaller than the "big reds" you can sometimes see along the roads, but also quite different from the wallaby.

The next morning it was a relatively short walk to the Jeanolan caves. We saw many nice webs....

And Jen was sharp-eyed enough to spot this leaf bug.

The caves themselves were interesting, but we've seen a lot of caves and after 3 nice days by ourselves it was a jarring transition to face the bus loads of people coming to see the caves.

At 3pm, it started to pour right before we caught our pre-booked bus back 78km along the road to Katoomba.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that we saw a lyre bird (though we didn't get a picture of it). We had read about it a little bit before the trip, and it was hard to see how large a bird it is from the google images available--but in person it turned out to be quite a large and beautiful bird.

All in all, the landscape in the Grosse Valley was slightly better, but we saw a ton of wildlife on the six foot track that definitely made it worth it.