DAY 7 – 25th July
Most of the boys woke up early and waited for a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast by the fire. We prepared for the hike and got in the 4WD’s to go to a place called caterpillar, where CJ would be taking us to teach us about the environment and the plants that had particular uses. We arrived there and CJ walked us through on a beaten track and talked about plants that could fix warts and toothache, and taught us about other plants like bush tobacco. After about 45 minutes of trekking uphill the group arrived to a beautiful sunny lake, or ‘swimming hole’. It was a huge lake with rocks reaching out of the water and stretches of mountainous black stone with strong currents flowing into the river between them. They were in the shape of enormous caterpillars, hence the name Caterpillar Dreaming. After changing into our swimmers on a smaller caterpillar rock we swam in the main lake for a while, enjoying the cool water. Maddie then showed us a place where we could jump off the caterpillars into the lake. We all had a few jumps and then went back to the small caterpillar and took our shirts off, put on shoes and our hats and soaked ourselves in sunscreen. We climbed to the top of a huge caterpillar mountain and CJ painted us like traditional aboriginal warriors with clay. After a few photos we went back down, got changed and trekked back to the vehicles. When we got back to Buru we had some downtime to properly pack our bags for the next day. We prepared a dinner of Carbonara cooked by the Red Team and a dessert of cake that CJ had brought. After some merriment around the fire we all sat down with CJ, PJ and Eddie and thanked them for giving us their time. We traded gifts and tokens of gratitude and said our goodbyes to them. We then had a nice, short reflection and for bed the boys were allowed to pull their stretchers outside and sleep under the stars, prepared for new experiences in Wujal
Joe Agius
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