Learning the value of living a day at a time

And so we wait – February dawns and the car is in pieces at the Accident repair centre and any hold up is due to the delivery of parts, the same supply issues that are plaguing all and sundry at present.

Bingley and I have been acquainted one week today! He is a dear little fellow who judging by his behaviour has had violence in his past. He is frightened of men and is very tentative around other dogs but has calmed a lot. We have been having lots of cuddles and walks! I have been vainly throwing a ball to him, but he appears not to know what to do with it, but he loves to roam, and we have been doing plenty of that in our static mode.

It is a constant source of wonder to me that anyone could mistreat an animal that only wants to be loved. Bingley has the most divine brown eyes and when they look up at me my heart and often my resolve turn to mush! Which makes his past even more of a riddle to me and keeps a constant prayer in my heart that I would never meet an individual that would be capable of such heartlessness.

We were very fortunate to meet in one of our roams a gentleman that also had a rescue dog, and I was making apologies to him that I was not sure how Bingley would react to his dog (he did quite well BTW). He told me about this local dog walking group that meets on a Sunday at the coffee van in the Woolworths carpark with their dogs and they go for a walk together and then have coffee. So I decided to attend and am so pleased I did – the group was made up basically of women of a certain age – and a couple of gentlemen with dogs! They were divine, funny, interesting, in love and frightfully maternal with their animals and utterly delighted to make Bingley’s and my acquaintance. We went for the shortest and mildest of walks that I think that I have ever done and then went back to the coffee van for coffee and treats for the dogs – it was fabulous! There is no doubt about it a dog in your life does broaden your social horizons.

I had a hire car for 10 days and did much driving around the local area, visiting Whyalla, Port Pirie and all the little places in between. The beaches are beautiful in this little part of the world clinging to the southernmost edge of the outback. I visited the outback museum which refreshingly was different from others that I had visited as it had the First Nation dreaming stories along with the stories of outback explorers. This has been a topic that I have been passionate about ever since I was privileged to do the Burke and Wills trek and particularly all that I learned of the bush tucker. It caused not a little amusement among the First Nations when they saw all the stores that had to be carried when they knew there was such a bounty around them in the landscape! I also learned how to make a spear (but was more than a little repelled by the necessity to chew of the kangaroo tendon before wrapping it around the pointy bit and the barb!) and a boomerang (which were never meant to return – you had to go to where you had thrown it to retrieve it) and was amazed by the plethora of patriarchs that saw fit to turn the wayward sons and nephews into stars!

I learned about the Afghan Cameleers at the museum too! Interestingly most were not Afghani at all but Indian – but I suppose in the unenlightened times of the explorers they thought they all looked alike! I of course had to go and have a sicky beak at the cemetery and found the grave of a cameleer not Afghani as noted on the grave but judging by his name an Indian. He had been born in 1859 and had lived to be 98! Oh, the stories he could tell I would love to have met him. One thing I did learn when doing the walk in the Uluru National Park is the legacy of the camels is not really a happy one. While they made perfect sense to use camels for their ability carry heavy loads and survive in desert conditions, when they finished with all that they just released them, and they are now feral and in this day and age of constant surveillance CCTV footage from outback water sources (can you believe it!) shows that they are competing with native fauna and winning with the getting the water. Increasingly the ingenuity of the outback population is looking at ways to exploit the camels – apart from camel tours, there are curried camel pies which are apparently very nice – I have not had the pleasure! And I was astonished to see on my way to Port Pirie the other day that you can buy camel milk. Now coming from a diary farming background I still cannot imagine how you milk a camel – do they put suction cups on the female camel teats or do they have a very high stool and large bucket and milk them by hand!! Staggers my imagination!

This extraordinary part of the world is surrounded by the most unusual landscape, one can almost imagine in the mists of time the molten stone boiling and bending and manipulating the landscape. The Flinders and the surrounding landscape fascinate me for they do not seem to have the points and shards of the Great Dividing Range for instance – it is a gentle undulating mass almost rolling along the landscape. In the past I have described the range as looking as though someone has left a brown doona bunched up on the landscape and it still does!