October 8th, 2005 – Nipple Piercing

Saturday morning we woke up early to catch a train to Gosford a small town on the outskirts of Sydney along the Northern Coast. Once we arrived we had less than 15 minutes to coerce an old information agent to help us get home the following day since the bus wasn’t running. We hopped on our bus and after 3 hours of travel on public transit realized that we had a considerable hike from the edge of the park to the waterfront. I bet you won’t bet where the first leg of our hike was spent? Yep, another highway! We got to our campsite and were excited to see that the best site of the 6 available was free and after killing the morning meandering out along the rocky coast, we set up our tent. We had just settled for a mid-afternoon nap when we were rudely interrupted by a couple claiming they were reserved on our site specifically. Since no mention of site specific reservations was made during my initial reservation phone call, I was suspect, but proceeded to enquire further and upon realization that they were right we moved our setup across a field to the back of the camping area.
Later that afternoon, I dragged Laure out for another hike across the park to Maitland bay to see a shipwreck for which the bay was named. The trails were overgrown but we made it down to the water front after an hour only to set our eyes on a fraction of a rusted hull. I’m not sure what I expected from a ship that wrecked in 1898, but at the very least the scenery was nice. We got back to our tent just before sunset and had a gourmet dinner for two of chicken and rice, all the while struggling to keep the flame from blowing out by the violent winds.
That night at ~3am I felt a strange twinge on my chest, more specifically my nipple. We struggled to find the light only to discover that a tic had managed to find the second most sensitive part of my body and grab hold. Revolted by the thought of leaving it there and without much thought I proceeded to grab and pull, fortunately it came out fully and cleanly, but I was traumatized. In the hour or so that followed where I couldn’t sleep I wondered Australia doesn’t have any deer? What kind of tic is it? A dog-like howl answered my question – Dingo’s, fortunately all we saw of them was their footprints in the sandy trails.
The next day we headed back to where we had got off the bus and proceeded an extra hour into the next town along MacMasters beach - Casacobana. With a lagoon smack in the middle of the beach, it was full of character. The bus ride home went past Avoca beach another trendy area in the North recommended to us, but we didn’t bother stopping. We arrived home showered, found another tic on Laure and proceeded to the pharmacist to find out more details on how to remove them properly. For future reference, here’s how to remove a tic: STEP1: Soak with alcohol to asphyxiate every couple of hours until the tic turns black. STEP2: Remove carefully ensuring to retain head. After our first dowsing of Laure’s it began to hurt her more trying to bury deeper and so I proceeded to cut STEP1 short and yanked the whole thing out.