No updates on our flight home. Still scheduled for April 1st, with no good options any earlier.

In the meantime, it’s been easy for us to be socially isolated. This place is vast, like Canada. We were the lone hikers (bush walkers) in the Killungoondie Area of the Dorrigo National Park. We did the Syndicate Track until I sort of freaked out because we were being targeted by hungry creatures neither of us had ever seen before.

When we arrived at the trail head, we were greeted only by some suspicious looking cattle.

We had a nice stroll through the paddocks, then found the bush walking track. It wasn’t long before we were deep into Australian rain forest.

There were some enormous trees, but evidence that the largest trees had been logged.

I figured we would do some bush walking on this trip, so I packed gaiters to go over my boots (I was a little paranoid about all the ground-dwelling creatures that can hurt you in New South Wales), but of course I forgot to take them on this bush walk in Dorrigo.

So we were enjoying the hike, and getting some good exercise. The track was a long incline with a few steep climbs every so often. The day was rainy and humid, but not hot. We’d been walking about an hour and a bit and had stopped for a rest and a sip of water when we noticed this worm-type thing on the leg of Phil’s pants. We tried to get it off with a couple of twigs, chop-stick style, but the thing had attached itself very tightly from one end of itself to the fabric of his pants. We practically had to kill it to get it off. That’s when I started to lose interest in the bush walk, and suggested we turn around.

We compromised and climbed for another half hour or so, then did a u-turn. About half way back, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my left boot, which I kicked off immediately and saw two or three of the worm-things wriggling around in it! I looked at my foot, and one was attached to my ankle – through my sock! That’s when I sorta freaked out. I whipped off the sock and might’ve squealed and jumped up and down like a child. I can’t quite remember.

Phillip very gallantly told me I was fine, and inspected my sock. He calmly said “Lemme just take a quick pic of it in case we have to show someone what bit you”. Like, a doctor(?), I presumed. That’s the pic up there…

After he got the few that he could see in my boot out of it, his hand was too big to fit inside to inspect it for others, so he stuck his phone in to have a look.

It looked to be all clear, so I put my de-wormed sock back on, slipped back on my boot and promptly removed the other one to have a look. It, too, was worm-free. The spot where that one took a taste of my ankle was just a dot of blood, and it didn’t hurt. I settled down, finally, but wasn’t interested in dilly-dallying, so I picked up the pace to get out of the rain forest.

We got back to the caravan, and changed our clothes and had a good look at the ones we took off. No hitch-hiking critters, that we found.

We discovered after a bit of internet research that the worms aren’t worms at all. They’re Australian Bush Leeches and nothing to worry about.