On a bicycle made for two...

Having surfaced from Mount Gambia’s sinkhole gardens (previous blog post #71) and cramped east over the state border into Victoria, L decided to scan Gumtree for casual jobs in our locality. It had been almost five months since we’d worked three weeks in Queensland. Since then, us and the Crampervan had traversed tens of thousands of kilometres over everything from dry river beds to flowing river crossings, sand and salt plains of outback deserts to coastal sand dunes and not forgetting those flat roads for as far as is visible. Those Queensland dollars had long dried up but with some time to spare before needing to be back in Sydney to sell the Crampervan, we found ourselves headed for a family farm in the Wando Vale, Victoria. Despite having only known our new employers for just over a week, L and I found ourselves waving goodbye to the young family of five from the inside of their home… we were farm sitting for the next five days! Duties included: Looking after

L and I were prepared for what was coming. It was set to hit 39’c and so we were out of bed with the rising sun and the jurassic dawn chorus. The other campers (side people) had also emerged early and were pottering around in just their smalls. They’d been wearing ‘just their smalls’, since we’d turned up early yesterday evening. To account for this weird behaviour and to obscure their rather rotund and wrinkly figures, we’d chosen to park up at behind a monstrous tree, a safe distance away. We’d so far mostly managed to avoid checking into campsites/caravan parks, preferring instead to free camp out in the wilderness in more picturesque locations, but given the temperature, for our second night in the Ikara-Flinders ranges we decided instead to check into The Wilpena campground and flop straight into the swimming pool to cool off. It reached 40degrees outside in the shade and we now had a little oven home on wheels. The fridge was doing well to maintain cold but

Our plans of following the coastline of South Australia’s Eyre peninsular were hampered by a change in weather. Warm days were out and according to the weather forecast, a week of overcast drizzly days were set to engulf the peninsular. This meant a change of plan but not before we followed the coast down to Smoky bay and then on to Streaky bay. The latter, a small town put on the map after a local chap caught an absolutely monstrous great white shark on the end of his fishing line and went on to spend 5 hours pulling it in. Poor shark! A replica hangs in a back room at the local petrol station, which also doubles up as an information centre for visitors as well as a popular takeaway curry house. Talk about diversification!  Leaving the coast would mean missing out on a few of South Australia’s beachy gems but L and I had decided that we’d seen enough dazzling white sands on our travels, besides the allure of the underground, outback town of Coober Pedy had become too great.