Granny by Pushi around in Australia. Hermine Stampa-Rabe
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train. At the beginning and end are four railroad engines to pull it forward. Herewith diminished coal is brought to the burning at Port Augusta. As so I understood it.
During the journey my male angel explains me the sheep farming and the scenery by trough we are just going. About this I know nothing. He himself owns 5,000 sheep after which he does not need to look. His sheep become clipped all two months. The short wool is used to the climate insulation in house constructions and roof structures. After six months the lambs become separated from the mothers. The sheep eat the dry grass, however, in the morning and in the evening they have water to drink.
Here grow the small salty bushes, Saltbush called, which they eat with pleasure. The sheep are bred as meat suppliers. These sheep which eat the salty bushes and Bluebush deliver an especially well tasting meat. If black lambs are born, they are not to be used. Black wool is not welcome. It concerns with most merino sheep. This wool must be always white.
It is difficult to receive the sheep always healthy. A big illness place is under the tail. Here they are especially treated. If it becomes too hot to the sheep and enough bushes are available, they creep under it, anyway the lambs. If it is very hot over the day and at night frost rules, unfortunately lambs die. There are up to 5,000 sheep of one single owner. For so many animals nobody can build a solar protection.
We drive into the Flinders Range, a regional very nice, mountainous area. He briefly stops in Quorn and shows me how I can come along tomorrow without having to cycle over high mountains out of this further after 48 km to Wilmington.
Then he turns back again and drives to the caravan park in Quorn where he also knows all people and these him. Quorn is a wonderful small place with two churches, hotels, a railway station and many houses from the early days. I am inspired and think to insert tomorrow one inspection day. Australia is a sheep country. Here every Sunday it is usual to roast sheep meat as festival food which is dished up with potatoes and vegetables.
In the Flinders Range it is mountainous with hilly country of grass and bushes. Here the sheep graze. Also kangaroos come and drink from the drinks for the sheep. I can see them. These are whole dark animals which live on top on the high mountains besides here. Because it is much colder there at night, they also have a thicker and longer coat of hair. Their ears are round, not sharp like those of the red and gray kangaroos.
This businessman, my male angel, owns a factory, in which the stone blocks from the mountains become broken in big or small little stones and pass away for the road construction. He tells me quite proudly that he has done $ 600 clear profits with the last horse running. He has put number 3 on the horse and has won.
From the registration of the local caravan park he brings me with all my belongings to a dreadful dry and sandy place where I should put up my tent. He still writes down for me his address with telephone number, if problems appear. Then I should call him. He will help me. Then I say thank you. And he goes to his hotel.
While I build up my tent, Gallahs, the pink-coloured cockatoos, float very much for a long time around the high and ancient trees which my rescuer calls "sugar-gum-trees". The normal, half-high trees have everywhere many sheets at the end of their branches. These are mallee-trees. They donate some shades.
Today now it has already been getting late. I sit in the space for mothers with kids. Here in it, unfortunately, it is also very hot. However, I do not dare to open the door because, otherwise, vermins come in.
Because my speedometer gave up his mind after 34.5 km, however, I saw at a sign how wide it was still to Wirrula. I drove 66 km.
16.01.2013: Rest day in Quorn: 0 km
At night it cools something. About myself in the air I hear the countless Gallahs shouting and flying.
During my today's rest day I allow to concern it quietly. Thus I walk in this small, old and pretty place. At the supermarket I make purchases. A young policeman stands beside me at the counter. I ask him in which area of Australia it feels chilly at the moment. There he smiles and says that it is hot everywhere. – Thus I have to cycle on!
At the railway station I talk to a woman who had emigrated here 23 years ago with her husband from England, after he had come to pension. They feel here very well and do not have the problems like the German emigrants: other money, other language, other weights and other traffic direction.
While I speak with the second woman who stands behind the bar, she shows me the advertisement for the "Pichi Richi train“, an old-timer railroad which drives here many tourists trough the Flinders Range in autumn. I knew from my yesterday's angel that this railroad journey is also a center of attraction because on half of the journey food is distributed.
And when she hears that I write about my bicycle tour a book she orders herself quite immediately a copy. She tells me how she does it if she must work in this scorching heat in her garden: to bind a humid, thin fleece towel before mouth and nose and one in the neck. Then I should drink as much that I must go lastingly to the toilet. But I can not drink as much during the bicycle riding. Then I can not bend me no more deeply enough over my bicycle by riding by racing handlebar.
To my relative, Hans in Melbourne, I write by email: „Hans, I stay at the moment in Quorn. And because I do not want to cycle on account of the scorching heat at night and also I became warned because then the home animals walk around or cross on the street, I would like to ask you where it is not as hellishly hot at the moment in Australia.“
As a result I receive by email this answer: „Here in Victoria we have only 22 ° C. The animals would be no danger for you. Everything friendly – Kangaroos, Echidnas, Wombats. Only for the cars they are dangerous. Hans.“ “If you come here, it is again also hot. 40+ tomorrow. Hans.“
Then I can start tomorrow my tour safely. Hopefully no Kangaroo or Emu jumps into my traversing bicycle.
17.01. 2013: Quorn – Wilmington: 41 km
When my alarm clock rings at 4.20 am, I get up. Outdoors it is still dark. I am surprised, why the noise of the flush resounds again in the toilet like an echo from outdoors. Yesterday my angel told me that the pink Gallahs copy noises. They are very much intelligent and can speak soon in captivity with right treatment. And outdoors they sit on a huge scale in the high trees. Maybe one sat on the roof of this sanitary arrangement? Why not? I am alone on the camping site.
Actually, I wanted to start in the darkness. My panniers stand ready to departure in the room. But a look to the glass door immediately lets me again forgotten this wish. In the room the light burns. Outdoors it is dark. And what do I see at my glass door? At it many big wing animals are floating around which might come in with pleasure. They have the size of hornets, but look gray. They try to prick themselves mutually with their sting of the abdomen. And there I should open the door?
No, this really does not go. They all would have come in. Thus I lie down on my sofa and wait for the time, until it is light outdoors. And with the brightness there disappear my undesirable onlookers.
Wonderfully orange the sky colours at the horizon. With the ready full loaded bicycle I start at 6.30 am in the quiet morning. I know my street where to go. Thus I leave this friendly place and cycle on a healthy tarred road in direction Wilmington.
Shortly after the sun comes about the horizon and dips everything in her beaming light. Before me spread to itself a flat and wildly covered area. Behind myself I leave the mountains of the Flinders Range. A dead kangaroo lies on the right edge of the road, it must have been started at night. It is not a male animal. Maybe one more young is in its bag?
However, the animal lies on the belly. And I may not turn it. What should I do with a young kangaroo baby? No, this really does not work. Thus I cycle further. The air feels with 26 ° C pleasantly chilly. But with the time the sun begins to fling her igneous glow against me. The today's distance to Wilmington should be only 40 km. And on this distance I would absolutely like to stand the heat.
Every now and then I cross a small deepening which belongs to a river which has dried up, however, now in this season. In the middle of the deepening of the