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| Goats and more goats |
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| Dug outs, These houses have a front entrance / porch and the remaining house is underground. |
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| Stumpy lizard |
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| Jock's place - entrance |
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| each mound represents a mine shaft. 1,000's of them. |
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| Lodgings for our time in White Cliffs |
Yogam - yes we are spending a lot of time in pubs, but it's not because we need the golden necter of a crisp beer in an air conditioned room whilst outside is 40 degrees. It is because in most outback towns, the town infrastructure is basically just a pub and houses. The pubs out here are the post office, place to purchase cooked food, accommodation (many outback pubs have an acre or 3 behind, where caravans, tents etc with maybe a cabin to hire), tourist info, petrol and avgas. The pub is the life blood for both tourists and locals alike. If you want to meet locals and hear a yarn spun, the pub is your only choice and the stories and language used is typical Australiana. Note - all stories are a little stretched. As we are on bikes, we are ununsual to most and ppl quite freely strike up conversations with us whether they are tourist or local.
Last night I conducted my nurse duties at 12:30am, 2:30am, 4:30am and then 8am. Pete is alive and kicking. Sore, but am sure he will elaborate further.
It was going to be another hot one, so after seeing the nurses early this morning, we had breakie and checked out the sights of White Cliffs. All of the places we visited today were at the peoples residence. They dug another room or two to show off their wears into the hill. Yes - like in Coober Pedy, the folks here live underground. So we got to experience that lifestyle today and thankfully the natural cooler temps which go with being underground. Not a place if you are clastrophobic.
We visited a photographic studio which was cool. Purchased a pic of a massive red kangaroo and a stubby holder. We then headed off to a gem show room and whilst nice, does not hold a candle to Coober Pedy and then ended the morning at Jock's place. He is a grumpy old fella who puts on a fantastic show of his dug out and all the antqiue "stuff" he has collected over the years. Farming, mining and old household goods, many 100 years old. Once we got back, the temps were up, so both Pete and I retired into our respective rooms and both slept for a couple of hours.
Once we finally got our butts outta bed, we attended to bike maintenance and then headed off to the bar which was fantastic. I tried to chat up a local lady (I knew she was local as she was wearing jeans in 36 degree heat) and we striked up a great convo. Her and her partner muster sheep and goats and her partner is the pilot (fixed wing aus plane called a jumbuck) . When he rocked up the 4 of us chatted a lot of mustering, planes and some interesting war stories. Like I said in the intro of today, find a local in a pub and chat.
Heading home tomorrow. Only another 130kms of dirt then road all the way home. About 900kms and its home sweet home. Both Pete and I are dying for food which is not pub food. So hopefully we can do Indian on Monday night.
Cheers from me - Richard
Peter's bit
Just sitting outside to write a few words at 8 pm and Richard has announced it's a "cool" 31 degrees !!! Slept reasonably well and Nurse Puffe did the nursing franternity proud with regular checkups during the night - getting out of bed to attend to important personal matters and top up on panadeine was a trifle interesting. The head cleared up about 4 am in the morning and the shoulder / rib cage has improved but it's still bloody sore under any exertion. As Richard indicated we went for a little tour today to visit a few places and to see if I could ride with a resonable level of control - all seems sorta o/k and we have just under 500 kms to ride tomorrow with approximately 130 of that on dirt / gravel. Earlier today I got most of the control levers back in their correct approximate operating positions and we've both just finished cleaning air filters then I'm going to oil the chain and start packing for an early start tomorrow - sort of 8 ish.
Talking to the Oz Bush Pilot was interesting especially the story about a crop dusters plane with a damaged main wing leading edge that was "fixed" by stuffing with a doona (eiderdown) retained with chicken wire and secured with 100 mph tape !!!! The visit to Jock's Place was most illuminating - not only the place and the collection but the laconic homespun philiosophy as well - opal miners are crazy, only pubs make money (the local one is for sale at only just $1.5M - reduced down from $2.5M), all politicians are bastards and the smartest person around here was his wife who walked out 15 years ago and never came back !!! Of course all prose was liberately decorated with that universal language of the outback where "fu*k" assumes all manner of meanings according to context or merely just used as a conjuctive to string a series of comments together :-)
We "dined" in town again this evening and it seems that Friday is the big night with some 30 ~ 40% of the population enjoying a beer at the pub or a meal at the local high class dinning establishment - the Corner Store. As Richard says, with few exceptions, Outback food is somewhat predictable and is generally always served with ample chips ... but somewhat suprisingly not generally Tom Sauce.
Richard has just put his bike to sleep with a comment that "if she does well for the next two days - she can have next week off" - yes Kaz I am getting worried :-)
Well almost time for bed ... and what luxury - air conditioned complete with TV and both inside toilet and shower. Almost heaven !!!
Till next time ... Cheers Pete
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