We packed up and left Castaway fairly early as we had a long drive ahead of us. We stopped at Henti sand dunes located about 12 km out of Strahan. At this point, Dad realised we hadn't returned the room key, so he headed back to do that while the rest of us climbed the sand dunes. They were about 30m tall and it took quiet an effort to climb them. By the time we'd climbed them, had a quick look around and gone down again, Dad had returned.
We then continued north, and stopped in ZeeHAN!! There was a museum there but we felt it was overpriced, so we continued north. We, for some reason, took the long way to Tullah and a little further up the road, stopped near Waratah to celebrate Jimmy and Snowy's birthday. (You might remember that these were Harrion's and Campbell's monkeys that we bought at ZooDoo.) We had cakes, a few lollies and a rousing rendition of happy birthday.
We continued north, passing through picturesque hills and valleys and little towns. We nearly hit a chicken crossing the road in Henrietta.
We eventually arrived at Stanley, booked into our accommodation and unpacked.
Mum and Christine went out to investigate dinner options as well as check on the availability of penguin tours.
Heading out for dinner, we eventually decided on the takeaway fish and chip shop, which tasted good. Having, as per usual, over-ordered. We fed the local seagulls. Most entertaining was watching the seagulls try to tackle a dim-sim. None of them were strong enough to take off with it, so there was quite a fight. It eventually ended up in an adjacent car park. Also, there was a quite a pursuit after the bird who scooped up a large potato scallop.
After dinner we checked out “The Nut”. It is a large rock formation that juts out into the sea. There are walking paths and a chair lift to the top and we plan to scale it tomorrow. We also visited the local cemetry enroute to the unit.
The night was quite cold, so we rugged up in preparation for the penguin tour. The bus met us at the cabin's reception and we joined two other couples on the tour. Our guide was a seventh generation Stanley resident and gave us a quick tour of the town enroute to the penguin stop-off. As proprietor of the chocolate shop, he stopped in there and gave the boys two chocolate frogs each. (Home-made, not the cookie-cut cadbury's affair).
After a short bus ride, we arrived at the penguin zone. It was very interesting; about one hundred penguin rookeries had been constructed and we saw several penguins on their way home for the night. In Mark and Christine's opinion, it was far better than the equivalent experience at Philip Island, Victoria.
Once again everyone was tired, so we headed back to have showers, evening drinks and crash into bed.
