Lake Leake

On fri nite we went up to our shack at Lake Leake. I think most of you guys who read/comment this blog would no bout it already, but I'll describe it 2 u anyway. Our shack isn't very flash. Its just two rooms, a sleeping room and a living room. Theres no hot water, no shower, no phone reception and the loo is outside in a seperate shed. But I love it up there anyway. The lake used to be nice and clean, but now the water levels so low that all the remaining water is really muddy and gross. its a trout fishery, but the water is low and warm and the trout are in-active and even more un-catchable than normal. Lake Leake is suffering from the drought, but it is also the water supply for Campbel Town, and now for Ross too. I don't get how that works. There must be some pretty high-teck filter systems involved to make that water drinkable! So at the moment I have told you all the reasons NOT to love Lake Leake and your are probably wondering why I bother to go there at all. In actual fact, its probably sounding just as undesirable as Ansons Bay. But now I'll tell you all the good things about Lake Leake, a list way longer than you could ever make one bout Ansons Bay. To start with, theres the bikes. We take our bikes up there, to ride around on the gravel road, along th fire trail (thats the ruf, hilly, track that runs through the busk behind the shacks) and toilet run hill (thats the hill all the Dads go up to empty the loos when they get too full, but its really steep and good for huge skids). Then theres the kiacks. We take our inflatable kiacks with us and paddle around the lake, over to the island, and sometimes have waterfights and tipping-each-other-out games. Then theres the number one reason that Lake Leake is better than Ansons Bay. The Morleys. They have a shack two shacks down from us. They have three kids, Sam (or Samamtha) who is six months older than me, even though shes a grade in front of me at school. She goes to Snt Marys, where they actually do work. James is a month younger than Rachel. He has long curly hair and he's more fun to do active stuff with than Sam. Even though he's Rachels age He's friends with me, and therefore he hangs with me and Sam. Ollie is the youngest. He's a whole year younger than the twins and he's nice, even though he sometimes anoys us. So anyway...we got up there fri night, but the Morleys didn't get there till 5 on Sat, so we just lazed around and did a bit of riding on Sat. But then our weekend got better. On Sun morning we had a raft-making competition. What you had to do was make a raft out of anything you could find, then manage to float at least two of your team members on top of the lake on it. I was working with James and Beck, Ray came and joined us half way through, when she got sick of lizard catching. We took a (argggh! i can't think of the word! historical? Normal? Traditional. thats it.) We took a traditional aproach to our raft. We got a collection of old boards and nailed them together onto some pine bases from an old crate. We then put it in the water and (drum roll please...) it floated! But hen james jumped on top and it glided slowly to the bottom of the shallow mudd planes of Lake Leake. Then James got up and it slowly returned to the surface. We decided we need to work on our rafts float-a-bility. Meanwhile the opposition (Sam, Kez and Ollie) had a floating raft that looked like...

... yep. thats right. They just stuck a whole bunch od boogie boards together.But it floated. and they could even padle it around. So we decided to find any old inatubes we could, to make our raft float with people on it. Unfortunately we only had two, and they both belonged to bikes. so we strapped them, along with two blocks of polystirene, onto the base of our raft. We then changed into bathers and took it back into the water. It floated even better by itself, but, yet again, James got on and it sunk. (btw we used James, cause he's lighter than me and Beck didn't want to be a gunie-pig) We then decided to cut down on weight by removing the boards that were falling off cause we didn't use long enough nails. They came off really easily, then we went back into the water, James got on and, you'll never guess, it FLOATED!!!!! But then I got on, and... it sunk. :( We than played around with it removing boards, letting beck have a go, And eventually the pollystirene snapped in half. Before we removed enough weight to get two people floating. I would like to add a picture here, but there aren't any on my camera and I can't be stuffed looking through the numerous other cameras we had with us.

I have to do my Maths home work now, I'll see if I can tell you bout the rest of my weekend later.