THE SLOW DRIVE

We woke this morning to a view of the Flinders Ranges. The Pollock brothers are always the first out of bed, usually before the sun is even up. The rest of the crew seem to like the warmth of their swags too much. The Flinders Ranges boast a view that would usually cost hundreds of dollars a night. One of the great things about swagging across the outback is the campsites are free and usually well set up for overnight stops and many of them have these kind of views. Once again we packed up camp and set off.

 It’s amazing how even out here I’m able to update this web site. Telstra’s Next G Country Wide is well named. The remoteness of some of these locations that I have internet coverage in is nothing short of amazing.

 

We had our first touch of bad weather today and had to cover the trailer with a tarp. The Ford does have windscreen wipers but its not very good, but luckily the boys knew a old bush remedy for this problem. A spud cut in half and wiped on the windscreen will make the rain run straight off. So luckily the rain didn’t slow us down too much and was short lived.

We arrived in Streaky Bay at about 3pm so we decided to have a coffee on the foreshore overlooking the massive bay. The waitress informed us of a good camping spot about 10km out of town. We arrived to find about 20 caravans in the camp spot but we managed to find a place for our camp. This camp was directly on the beach of the Great Australian Bight, so we decided to throw a line out to try and catch a feed of fresh fish for breakfast. This created a bit of brotherly banter between Brett and Tim. Tim claimed that the odds of Brett catching anything edible where 20 to 1, so the bet was on. After about 20 minutes Brett had his first fish. It was a Tommy Rough (called a Herring in WA). As you can see from the picture below this fish was certainly no monster and wouldn’t feed a child let alone four hungry fellas. There was some contention between the two brothers whether this mere fish could be considered edible. After about 35minutes Brett was onto something big. He pulled in a massive Flathead that was about 2.5 feet long and weighed about 4.5 pound. Brett won, so Tim agreed to buy a bottle of Galway Pipe port to settle the bet.

Brett received his minutes for the Sydney meeting on the 24th march for Desert Knowledge, Our Outback Tourism Program and was able to amend and approve the draft minutes for circulation whilst sitting on the beach. This is business and working at its best for outback Australia.