Hoosh!

Today (Wednesday) I woke up feeling pretty good, which was good. For the first words out of Dennis mouth when he saw me was “Dad are you well enough to make a sand castle this morning?” I said “Yes!”

After breakfast Dennis and went looking for the beach. A short walk later we found a completely empty beach that leant itself very nicely to making a sand castle. We scoped out the best spot and built the best sand castle ever! I am sure that it ultimately succumbed to the waves ... however it would have taken a while! The 'ideal' spot was on top of a one foot ledge of sand that ran the whole length of the beach. The water has to rise a long way then overcome our wall!

After the sand castle we were off to ride the camels! So we packed up, loaded up the car and went back to the beach (a different beach.) John runs the camel rides on the beach from 8:30am to 2:00pm every day of the week. He is quite the character and showed it real quick when he told Dennis to help himself to anything he can find the lucky dip bag located right underneath the camel’s tail. We had to sign something which basically said if we get hurt tough. We were fitted out with helmets (I thanked him and tossed it aside) and we went over to the camels.

I have a video of Chris and Dennis getting on their camels when it was my turn I found out why he kept on saying lean back. When the camel gets up he does it rear legs first. If you lean forward you will end up in the sand. Once up John had a few things to do so we just sat there waiting for him. While we sat there the Camels stood still. I could have been on a statue for all it moved. This was not a long period of time, say two minutes, however I was shocked that the camel just stood there without moving for two minutes with me on its back. When I have ridden horses they always seem to move around.

Then we were off for a 30 minute walk up and down the beach. The walk was very entertaining with John telling us about Camels, their history in Australia, his customers, and a bit about himself. At the apex of the walk he took my camera and photographed the three of us together and individually. The most interesting fact that I heard was that it was a camel that delivered the first piano in New South Whales. They strapped it to a camel’s back and off they went. The largest recorded weight in Australia is one ton. (I suppose that would have been a regular US Ton as it was recorded in the 1800’s not a metric one.) They strapped a ton onto a camel, it stood up, walked a mile or so to win the prize for its owner.

These camels were not quite up to that game but impressive non-the-less.

When we arrived back John gave the camels their last command with us on board. Hoosh! That means kneel. So the beasts kneeled down and we stepped off. Nothing to it!