Nadgee expedition day 1

We are undertaking a DofE style, 4 day 3 night totally self-sufficient walk in the Nadgee wilderness reserve. Only 30 people are allowed in the reserve at any one time, and since it’s pretty big, you rarely see other groups.
We left Henry (the car) at the car park at the far North of the reserve and started walking at about 12. Plan for the day was to walk 21km or so to a campsite that we will stay at for 2 nights. The further away from the car park, the smaller the walking track became, yet after 21km it was still fairly fast walking. It was fascinating terrain to walk through, white beaches, eucalyptus forests, sand dune scrub bushes and moorland.
We descended to a salt water lake, block from the ocean by the beach, and saw 3 different groups of walkers! This was quite a surprise after seeing nobody for 3 hours! The salt water late was between 30 and 40 degrees, felt like a bath!

Arriving at our chosen campground, we were delighted to hear from a group of fisherman that there was fresh water close by for drinking. After a short search, we found it, a 100m wide shallow lake filled to the brim with reeds. It definitely needed boiling/ sterilising before it was drinkable, however with only 1L of meths for the trangea and no sterilisation tablets, we realised that we’d have to use fuel sparingly if we wanted to last the full 4 days.