Day 15 Simpson Gap to Jay Creek

Bond Gap

An early start as have quite a walk today, and it’s hot for us around 24 degrees and we suffered yesterday.
So wakey wakey at 5.30, breakfast at 6.00AM and into the bus an hour later.
We were on the track at 7.35 AM, from Simpson’s Gap, on what started as quite a cold morning. Hands cold, crisp morning with delightful colours around the hills.
We had decided to walk Simpson’s to Jay Creek, as the previous day had been quite warm and we wanted to start in the cool.
The Track was a great piece of track construction, following the contours with some great benching and even an arch bridge with keystones.
The actual trail did not follow what was on the map
First stop at Bond Gap, with a delightful rock pool leading through the gap, with reeds and still water, with great reflections.

The day started to warm up, so the next stop at Mulga  Camp was “first lunch”.  A rather interesting dunny and had two tanks supplied with water from Alice. The dunny was corrugated iron composting in a snail configuration and hot and horrible, though had toilet paper.
The walk was over savanna country and had a sameness about most of it most of the day.
Then a walk through a small gap, Spring Gap, where we had “second lunch” (I think we are turning into Hobbits) and out towards Jay creek, via an undulating trail, still nicely benched and good walking.
We arrived at Jay Creek at 3.00PM and the water was still deliciously cold.
We were then given free rein as Simon took the back marker position, so I was able to stride out and arrived at the bus at 3.58PM with the rest of the group arriving over the next 15 minutes.
It was then a repeat of the previous day’s trip home, with a mad scramble for the showers, before dinner.
After dinner, the entertainment was “Telegraph” a bit like Chinese whispers, in which a message is whispered from person to person to see what arrives at the other end of the circle.
Colin was the Senior Telegrapher, reading the message to the first person and so on.
One is worth repeating. The message was “Dear Simon, Sorry to hear your bum is on fire stop try using potato salad in the evening or porridge in the morning stop love Ethel.”
This came out as ”I am sorry Robyn but your butt is on fire with potato thrip. Please try something else”.
Simon's thoughts of the day-Life's goal is to take control