Minus 4 and bloody cold this morning!
Easy day to write about. It started with an early morning radio interview I had forgotten about but the persistence of the caller got me cranky enough to answer - oops - it went ok, a Sydney station, I was still asleep so it wasn’t my sharpest effort.
From here we had a look around town and while a Caroline stumbled on the best fabric shop she has seen and I stumbled on the best book shop I have been to. The WHOLE shop was The Australiana section ! Droving stories, black fella books, pioneers - unreal.
The day could have been a lot more colourful but unfortunately I didn’t get a call up at the camel cup. Spewin. I’d love to race one. They basically lead the camels 400 metres away from their mates and then turn around and go for it. Most of the jockeys made it look pretty easy - except for one poor bugger - I thought he had a rough camel at first but he raced a couple of times and he just couldn’t go with the motion. He was coming down as the camel was going up and they just kept meeting in the middle. He’s going to wake up tomorrow feeling like he was in a bar fight.
We bumped into a few people we knew from Campfires days and one was a mate I haven’t had a beer with for years, Steve Sullivan. He was the bore runner at Manballoo Station near Katherine years ago and had cut up a beast for us to keep us in meat. Colin Mitchell and I had been camped at Newcastle Waters down the road a bit (South of Katherine on the Stuart) but were down at Mount Isa Rodeo for the weekend. We were to make the 16 hour drive back past our camp and onto Steve to collect the meat where Steve would be waiting for us at 9pm, on the corner of Stuart and the dirt Buchanan Hwy. The drive went a bit pear shaped. Colin, while on long service leave from his job in Corowa, just got news he was made redundant and inherited $60,000. He was wrapped and got himself as full as a tick on the drive back. I was that tired from the drive (and the rodeo) I filled our diesel tank with unleaded at Barkly Homestead. We ended up meeting Steve for the meat at 2am where he was still waiting for us! We drank the rest of Cols slabs and made camp for the night pretty well where we stood. It was great catching up with Steve today at the cup.
Today was Caroline’s turn to work some magic. Steve and I had eventually managed to secure a table and seats in the shade (a precious commodity today!) for our families but Caro went one better - she got us all in the members area - Enclosed and air conditioned with our own bar, toilets and a perfect vantage point for the kids to see the camels. Good job missus.
All the kids got into the spirit of the day too, as they usually do, and entered in the hobby camel cup in their respective age groups. None got the bikkies this time but all had fun.
(That’s Adelaide on the left- she was angling for an inside lane, but was muscled to the outside)
(That’s Bill in the middle, Tilly on the right, holding her skirt down)
At days end we said goodbye to all including the Uluru Camel team (who cleaned up) and headed into town to have tea at ‘the overlander steak house’. The lady at the front was a bit of a wannabe snob (wrong town for that sort of pretence darlin’!) - she actually looked like she was starring in her own sit com and informed me that we might be a chance of getting a table later next week but tonight were fully booked. I told her no worries there were vacancies at KFC.
Back at the float we ate our KFC and watched Richmond get beaten by 2 points.
Looking forward to punching some k’s and getting further North tomorrow.
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