The Royal National Park and the Attack

On December 27th, Dan, our third and final visitor arrived.

I had my visitors on very tight schedule. I’d plotted out every day, from Carolyn’s arrival through our last day in Sydney, in order to maximize everyone’s time. I wanted make sure everyone of our three visitors got to see what they needed to see, but that no one had to deal with too many repeats.

This meant that there was no downtime for Dan after his long flight. I have to give him credit, he was a trooper. We picked him up at the airport, brought him home to drop off his stuff, and then piled everyone back in the car for a day trip. We took a small detour to pick up Alex, and then we all headed out to the Royal National Park.

Greg and I briefly passed through the Park on way back up the Grand Pacific Drive, but we’d hit it at dusk and weren’t able to spend much time there. What we did see of it we found charming and were anxious to see more.

We hadn’t done much research on the hikes beforehand, so we headed right to the visitor center on our way in. A seemingly nice park ranger gave us some recommendations on a couple of hikes, and she even marked them on a map for us. Getting advice at visitor centers had worked for us up until this point, so we had no reason to doubt this ranger now.

Our first hike of the day was lovely and a great variety in scenery. We started near a beach and wound our way up through hills fill with trees and plenty of rocks to scamper on.

Eventually, the trail opened up onto sandstone cliffs that jutted out dramatically over the ocean. There were some spectacular formations and patterns in the rocks. Plus, the views were so pretty that we ended up just hanging out here for a long time. Some of us even took naps.

Alex was all tuckered out.

Here are Greg's pics from our first hike:

Eventually, we forced ourselves up and back down the way we came. We had a quick picnic lunch down by the beach, and then drove to the second trailhead. As we got out of the car, we all saw an abandoned pair of sneakers at the beginning of the path and commented on weird this was. Why would someone just leave their shoes on the side of the road? But we just shrugged and kept going.

This hike started as fun as the first. Whereas our morning hike had been mostly rocky hills and ocean cliffs, this was a forest loop. It started out so lovely! There was mix of rainforest and temperate trees and it definitely had that beautiful fairyland feel I love so much. Some people may have been inspired to act out fantastical adventures.

Forest Games. Incidentally, the loud roar in the background isn't some camera glitch -- it's really loud in the rainforest!

There were also some spectacular stumps that had been hollowed out by fires.

All in all, everyone was having a great time. Then about ¾ of the way through the loop, Marc comments that he’s got a weird itch on leg. A couple of minutes later it was still bothering him and he leans over to scratch the itch. He finds a leech sucking on his leg.

‘Eeeeewww Gross!’ yelled Alex and Dan. Greg and I had encountered one once before in Eungella and helped him get it off, but the general attitude was, ‘Sucks for you, dude!’

About five seconds later, we all realize we’re covered in them too. Ok, I only had one, but everyone else had like four or five. The group breaks out into a crazy dance of panic while trying to pull off leeches. Let me tell you, those little guys are hard to get off. You try and pull them on one end, and they seem to be able to stretch forever. Once you do manage to get them to let go, the quickly whip around and latch on someplace else. *

We all run through the final section of the loop to get back to the car, and as we’re all frantically peeling off layers of clothes and inspecting each other, we see that abandoned pair of sneakers again. Suddenly, the sight makes a lot more sense.

Blurry, but you can see how these guys can really stretch.

Greg remained the most calm, having already been in that situation before. As he drove down the hilly road on our way out of the park, he very evenly stated, “Guys, I don’t want to alarm you, but I just found one more on my leg.” Then managed to somehow get it off his leg while continuing to drive, cool as a cucumber. I think I generally held it together pretty well and was able to help the others pull off a couple.

Dan, however, took the Drama Queen Prize. After Greg found and removed his last sucker, Dan commented that he was just happy that he hadn’t found any in the general area between his knees and his belly button. Well, he cursed himself right there, because as we pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot for a pit stop, we suddenly heard Dan yelling from the back seat. He proceeded to leap out of the car and started running around the parking lot, flailing his arms, shouting “Oh, Fuck! Oh, Fuck! Oh, Fuck!”

Sure enough he’d found one right bellow his belly button. We eventually managed to calm him down long enough to get it off.

They're small, but they really can suck out some blood.

The one thing I want to know is, why didn’t that park ranger warn us? A ‘Hey, this is a lovely hike, but you might want to tuck in your pants to keep the blood suckers out’ would have been very helpful.

Here's My slideshow from the day:

* Note: When we got home we looked up the best way to remove a leech, and found out that it is not advisable to pull them off because it can cause them to regurgitate back the contents of their stomachs, and this can include bacteria that can cause the wound to be infected. It is better to scrape them off with a credit card or even your fingernail, essentially getting between the mouth and your skin. Sure enough, one of Greg’s bites – the one from Eungella – did get infected and itched for months afterward. Here's more info.

View Larger Map