On the day of our departure, we finished the milking and had
a bath to cleanse ourselves of cow sh*t before returning to normal life, where
people with cow sh*t on their face and/or clothes are regarded with suspicion.
Peggy said I could drive the car into town, so obliging I drove us off despite
not knowing the way and as it turned out, the rules of the road out here
either, and we made it 40km or so before I said to Peggy that, as I’m not sure
of the rules of the road in a town (they are different trust me) we swapped
seats outside a Macadamia nut factory and onwards we continued. The journey was
relatively awkward, but that’s to be expected given the situation, we were just
glad the farm was 70km outside of Bundaberg and not 200km out of Bundaberg!
After arriving at a local hostel, which was shut, we went
for a wander and grabbed a Maccy D’s where Nicola surprised me by buying a cheeky
pair of cheeseburgers to accompany our main meal (I had an Aussie Lamb Burger –
nice). We checked into a hostel that was literally inside the coach station and
set off into Bundaberg for a walk around – we needn’t have bothered as it is
pretty dull. We did buy a dongle so that we could access the internet anywhere;
a week on a dairy with no phone and internet taught us the need for remote wireless
access. We killed time by walking around in circles (I was leading the way and
it was deliberate) before heading back to our hostel where I tried, and failed,
to work our dongle. After 20 minutes of frustration and cursing I gave up and
gave it to Nicola…5 minutes later we were surfing the internet.
We were thinking where to head next and we settled on Airlie
Beach – the entry point to the Whitsundays Island chain off the Queensland
coast. The only snag was that the bus didn’t leave until 19:30 and was 11 hours
overnight. So to kill time we played some ping pong where I showed the spin
techniques learned through a year living in China…and won by 2 games to 1.
We headed to the local K-Mart and bought some clothes and I bought
more socks, later discovering that I had already bought socks in Australia and
was now inundated with socks but seriously lacking in pants (cow sh*t gets
everywhere) so I’d now have to operate on an alternating pants basis i.e. one
day the right way round, the other inside out. We also finally signed up to Medicare, the Australian health coverage
that’s not quite as comprehensive as the NHS where we were informed that should
we, say need an ambulance in an emergency, make sure we ask to be taken to the free hospital...disconcerting to know
that we are too poor to afford to pay for life saving treatment, a sombre
reminder of why we should preserve the NHS (only political opinion to be
expressed in here I swear…or will try to swear anyway). The only issue is that
we didn’t have an address, so we were given temporary Medicare cards that would
last us three weeks…best not get ill before we find a place to live.
After much time was killed, most of it spent saying how glad
we were to be getting out of Bundaberg (far too small town for us…saying
something with us coming from Swansea and Carmarthen!) we got on board the
Greyhound which was fast becoming as consistent a fixture in our lives as it
was in the UK. We were lucky and the bus was quiet so we managed to get a row
each meaning we could kind of lie down and get some sleep in.
After 11 ½ hours on the road (the size of Australia is
ridiculous) we found ourselves in Airlie Beach, with a hostel courtesy van
waiting to pick us up…things were starting to look up again.
p.s. note no pictures of Bundaberg - we didn't feel it was worth taking any
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