We stopped for lunch in Katherine NT. We knew we were just a few hours from Darwin but we were starving. We circumnavigated the town and settled on the supermarket as the most likely source of fresh food. We bought some fruit, an avocado, some bread and settled down outside the Visitors Centre in the shade for a picnic lunch. A tanned fellow on a bicycle was under the next tree. How gutsy, i thought, cycling in this weather. And with all that gear he must be riding a fair distance. Was he heading from Darwin south? or to Darwin north?
Jeff James is in fact on the final leg of a 15 month journey on his bike from Barcelona to Melbourne. His website tells more www.whereonearthisjeff.com and is a most entertaining read. He loved having people to chat to, especially as we picked his brains about the ferries between indonesian islands that we will soon be visiting. If you see him on the road, make time for a chat and congratulate him on a truly epic ride.
Roadhouse schnitzel with sump oil gravy for dinner yesterday. Territory style. Everything deep fried in batter. Even the batter has batter. Salad - deep fried. Well, almost. Dinner tonight - in Tennant Creek - was thai beef sald. Thai because it tied me up for about ten minutes chewing each mouthful before i could swallow.
Cruise control sorted - a wire had been nipped, probably when the alarm was installed. An hour of dismantling the dashboard, a “Eureka” moment, a small bit of tape, $88 to the auto-electrician and off we went.
The Stuart Highway is like a giant conveyor belt. Grey nomads towing caravans one after another as far as the eye can see. Having a ball, they are, except the couple arguing in the stopover about whose turn it was to be packing the food away. Why should domestic bliss change just ‘cos you are on the road?
Karl is the young man sitting behind the car in the photo. He is the perfect ad for picking up hitchhikers. Just outside Coober Pedy, Jack driving, we start to get up speed and there he is, classic pose, none of this post-modernist cardboard sign nonsense. Just a thumb and a smile.
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We did manage to drive away, Sunday morning, a very cold and teary moment. I felt like a beast, tearing away at the heart of the family just for some crazy dream. Taking us away from Jan, from ‘home’. We sniffled all the way down the freeway, and then by the time we got past the urban sprawl started to feel like we were really doing this thing.
A few moments of doubt, I confess. Is this the craziest of all my crazy schemes and obsessions? Have I gone just too far this time?
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To be sung to a Sarah Vaughan song …. And I can’t remember the name of it but it suddenly just came to me when they told me of their predicament!!!
They hurried through the party
Hurried through farewells
Left before the sun coming up was through
Why did they hurry through the party
And hurry through farewells
To leave some time for dawdling
To find the barge in Darwin is cancelled now
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