Tuesday, November 6, Barkly Homestead Caravan park to Roadside rest south of Normanton

     We had damp toes after a night of rain, but the old tent held up pretty well. And the temperature had fallen quite a bit during the night. Sleeping at roadside rests in Oz works out quite well. Except for the occasional road train passing in the night that is nearly as loud as the real thing, it's free, and convenient, and quite safe. When we had arrived the night before we were the only ones there, but by the time we got in our tent there were five other groups of travelers there. Three were troops of young French people, and the gang parked next to us had a birthday party at the adjacent picnic table, complete with popping champagne corks and appertifs. Diana talked to one of the young woman, actually 31, for about an hour while I composed a blog posting. Ah, the conviviality of travel.

      Our tent was dry by the time we left, and we headed north into the tropics. Of course here in central Australia it is the tropics by geographic definition alone, we were still in the arid outback. Driving along I noticed a murmuration of small birds flying along near us forming a constantly changing cloud shape. We hadn't seen such behavior before in Oz, and I wondered what kind of birds they were. But on one change of course they flew right by us, and I realized they were budgerigars, the same green parakeets that my Grandma used to keep (poor Jakey, all alone in his cage, dreaming of flying free with his mates back home in Australia). They were fast, their rapidly beating wings carrying them along at nearly the same speed as our LC. That flock soon disappeared into the bush, but others would appear, flying across the road or in and out of the trees, much too fast to get a photo.

     Check this out for another noteworthy sight;

 Gray skies, only the second or third time during our two months in Oz,
 I could have gotten a better photo but that stupid sign was in the way

Neat old Holden Station wagon passing us

     A fair percentage of the outback has been charred by bushfire. Whether by accident, arson or for fire management and rejuvenation, it does mar the view, at least to our American eyes. It also reveals the extent of the littering problem near some communities. Where the grasses have been burnt off you can see miles and miles of cans and bottles lying like bones on the dirt. It's difficult to imagine the scale of litter being heaved out speeding car's windows. At least the paper and plastic detritus are consumed by the flames.

I wonder how the termites hold up against the flames

     Our only touristic stop of the day was at Devil's Marbles, just south of Tennant Creek. We didn't see Bob the Dingo, which is good thing because we wouldn't have been able to offer a drop to drink, being fresh out of wine, but we did walk around the place for a half hour or so. A massive bush fire had recently swept through the area, but it was still a fascinating place to expore.

No sign of Bob the Dingo anywhere

It's nice being married to such a strong woman

     We pulled into Tennant Creek just after six. Our first stop was at the sole bottle shop in town to buy a cask of wine, confidant that our timing was just right, since in Alice Springs you could only by boxes of wine after six. The joint was tiny, barred by a locked wire door and manned by a skinny bloke sucking on a hand rolled cigarette. He let me in, probably because I had the correct skin color, and I asked where he kept the boxed wine.

    “You can only buy boxed wine between 4 and 6.”

     “That's funny, because in Alice Springs you have to wait until after 6.”

     “Well, the rules are different here.”

     Looking around the tiny shop I saw one narrow rack of bottled wine, not much of a choice here. Normally, I'm not so desperate to have wine to drink, but we were going to be throwing camel steaks on the barbie that evening and somehow camel and Schweppes wasn't going to cut it.

     “How much are these wines?”, I asked, not seeing any prices posted.

     “Which one, mate?”

    Alright, there were only about four different brands to chose from, and I could tell by looking around the place that we were going to be ripped off anyway we cut it, so I asked, “which one is the cheapest?”

     “The Yellow Tails are $13 a bottle”. Yellow Tail. Haven't been too impressed by Yellow Tail when I've drunk it before, but I grabbed a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Hopefully it would go well with camel steak. I paid him, he unlocked the door, and I retreated to the LC.

     We found a campground near the edge of town and claimed the empty barbeque. Sliced potatoes, onions, and asparagus went on the flat surface, and just as they were about done I threw the thin camel steaks on the open grill. We opened the wine, had a toast to commemorate our first dromedary steak, and dug in.

     First bite, hmm, texture like beef, sort of a liver flavor. Not bad. Drink a little wine, swallow a forkful of potato and onion. Second bite of meat, hmm, I looked over at Diana and she had an unpleasant look on her face. I put more pepper on the meat and had some more. I wanted to like it, I'm not picky if grilled meat has a bit of chewiness to it, and I love liver, so that wasn't it. After swallowing, a sort of aftertaste lingered that was unlike anything I've ever tasted. Sort of a sour, overripe grassiness. I tried more salt and pepper, then resorted to catsup. But the more I ate, the more camelly it got. We put the third piece back on the grill to see if more cooking would help. Nope. Oh well, we ended up throwing it away. I wonder if the camp cat wandering around would have eaten it. Even the wine was disappointing. Fortunately the grilled veggies were fine, so we didn't starve, and there are always Tim Tams. So we've met a meat that neither of us like, possibly a first. I guess we'll stick to the basics, like lamb and kangaroo.

     I'd like to say the rest of the night was perfect, but in our tent the sounds of people fighting in the Aboriginal community near the campground all night, and roosters crowing and dogs barking and neighbor campers coughing out their lungs made for an unsettling night.