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August 14, 2001
Overland Australia - Update 20
August 14, 2001
Day 22
Emu Parade
For those of you who don't know what an Emu Parade is, it's when you have spent enough time somewhere to mess it up with rubbish. The actual Emu Parade part is when you clean the place up; collecting rubbish, to clear the campsite/area.
I woke up at 4.10am - with a large amount of cursing to myself - to have the camp breakfast ready for the rest of the gang; porridge and billy tea. I ate my breaky and slept/zoned out until leaving time. Our campsite wasn't in the best shape and we had to have an Emu Parade before we left.
We cycled over sand for 2 and half-hours, half of which was walking. We then met a few men sitting around drinking coffee inspecting the track, looking for the easiest and fastest way on redoing the road. We stopped and talked to Shorty; a tall man who wears small boys' football pants. We also met Shorty no.2, who is just small. They told us about the route we should take, and were most helpful.
Around 45 minutes later, our trusty fill-in support driver, April, radioed back to say that there were several emus by the road. We stopped at the support vehicle and looked at the most curious cows we have come across. As a matter of fact they started nibbling on Todd's Super V Cannondale bike. We stared in awe and didn't save the bike from being mistaken for aluminum grass. Meanwhile Bel diverted our eyes to two emus parading and inspecting our newly used bicycles. They didn't want to eat the bikes though.
This was a rather special time for us as we had two animals we rarely (emus x 2) or commonly (cattle x 15013) see, come up close and inspect us. We realized that it was because we are usually polluting the air with noise: laughing, talking, shifting. So instead of us attempting to find the animals, the animals found us.
The rest of our day was rather uneventful except for the fact that I got the only puncture for the day. A long cycle over rather hard ground and a scenery change of dense brush to 5 or 13 trees off on the horizon, some 15km away (but maybe they were small trees though and were only 8km away?). They looked a long way away anyhow. So I am now sitting under the stars writing this and thinking more about going to bed.
Good night.
Feed your children wheat. Joshua
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Posted on August 14, 2001 12:46 PM