Toilet Tours / Gimme Shelter

Toilet Tours:

Gimme Shelter

This particular toilet has significance. Personal significance. Let me explain... We were on Day One of a walk, a walk along the Great Ocean Walk. Here are extracts from my journal for that day:

It rained. And it was cold. We were picked up at about 8:15. By which time we had put on our raincoats. From then till two o'clock there were regular patches of drizzle. Not too bad -- but it turned the track into a muddy minor creek.

Our first river crossing -- "usually nothing much at all" -- was reported to be quite deep. So we were dropped at Shelly Beach. Or, at least, at a junction which lead to Shelly Beach. So we missed the Elliott River crossing. Which, we heard later, had water almost up to the knees. Unless we misunderstood the Japanese hiker who told us of the crossing.

The different drop-off point meant that we had a shorter than expected walk. The driver said, give him a call when we finished and he would try to pick us up early. The walk was -- except for the mud and drizzle -- not too hard. Mostly through forest, we had by-passed the beach walk. Finally, we reached the coast: Blanket Beach, our end point for today. Guess what ? A creek flowing out to sea that we had to cross.

We took off shoes and socks -- I put on my thongs (that's flip-flops to non-Australians) -- rolled up pants legs -- except for me, I was wearing short pants -- and waded across. Water up to our ankles. Mind you, our socks were already very wet. I wonder if we should have simply strolled across, boots and all ? Up a few steps to a shelter...

A family of ten or so people having a picnic there. They were camping but preferred a roof over their heads to crouching round a camp fire in the rain. We chatted a while as we put shoes and socks back on. Then we headed off the extra hundred metres or so to our pickup point.

Perhaps we should have stayed in the shelter...

Pickup was to be at a picnic area. With trees but no shelter. And a chilly wind... It seems there were lots of people not starting where planned, or not appearing for pickup where expected. Our own pickup was scheduled for 3:30. It was on time. We had to wait almost two hours... The rain had (mostly) stopped but the wind was chilly. The only shelter with a roof was the toilet. So we spent a lot of time huddled in the building with the long drop dunny...

We assumed that the few passers-by had many a strange explanation for our toilet tenure :-) For our part, we wondered over the need to put a padlock on the toilet roll holder:

And speaking of near hysteria...

Two of us were shaking with cold shivers. We tended to hysterical humour. We were all cold ! It was so good when the minibus finally arrived ! We sat in it, out of the wind, and felt immediately better. The driver still had to search for two more hikers -- quickly found -- and we were off to our night's accommodation.

Ahh ! memories :-) Walking in the rain and sheltering for an hour in a toilet. What a very excellent holiday.

..o0o..

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