June 1st: Rest Day in Tennant Creek
Day 231
Last night there was a party. We heard singing, laughing, screaming, music, and revelry until all hours. On every side of the caravan there was a different kind of pandemonium, with dogs barking, the corrugated steel fence surrounding the caravan park rattled and banged. The following day the main street which was filled with aborigines socializing, shopping and going about their daily affairs were deserted with only a few people here and there. It was difficult to imagine that these were the same people that we saw on our way to the store the other afternoon, who were quiet, and avoided our gaze when I was just giving a friendly glance. Although we didn’t see who was partying we would have to guess there were more than a few people nursing some serious hangovers.
Anthills dressed up
We spent the day catching up on the blog, which seemed to be a never ending battle. We did avoid the daily dose of wasted time on the Internet, but we had to dedicate all the rest days to the updates. Internet out here is scarce, and when we do have it we are using it to solve our day to day needs, like locating water, food and shelter.
From here to the next major town – Mount Isa is 658 km and we don’t want to be forced to buy double priced groceries, or go hungry in between. We should be more concerned about the latter than the former. But since we are now fed, we can worry about our budget, which is going to be much more than we thought. We are already spending about $45 per day, and we’ve only eaten out twice and are living out of a tent all the time.
However as we learned at the Red Rooster, wages are very good here, hence many of the high prices. Once the manager there learned that we were from Hong Kong, he announced that he’s been there 3 times and the last time he brought his family of 8 and they went to Disneyland. Trying to do that on McDonald’s wages in the States, Hong Kong or most places for that matter. Cher and I were amazed.
Today we met a few extraordinary people. We met a lady, 70 years of age, living out of a tent and touring Australia in her little car. She stood out in the crowd of caravans. We started chatting and learned that she had been planning this for a while and when her sister, loosing the battle against Parkinsons urged her to go, reminding her that she may not always have her health. She planned on traveling for at least a year, and hadn’t made definite plans on where to go next. We would have never guessed her age. She was fit and looked perfectly at home in her little tent. She showed all the self sufficiency and capability of a well heeled traveler. Cher and I were inspired.
When we finished our dinner we heard that there were a group of people who just arrived on the same “funny bikes” as we have. Cher and I wandered over to their cabin and began snooping around their trikes. They weren’t home yet but we couldn’t resist. We later found out that they did the same when we were out. Finally we found the other trikers we had been hearing about for the last 2 weeks. Of course they were a quirky and interesting group – Pierre and his partner Veronique from France and their friend Brian from Australia. Each of them were in their 50’s or older, we didn’t ask. They were traveling from the South to the North and were putting in at least 100 km per day. Traveling fast and light on aluminum framed Catrikes with 26 inch rear wheels, they were making quick work of their tour.
We decided to meet with them tomorrow and to take a tour of Tennant Creek and to have a coffee. Cher and I decided within minutes of meeting them that we would be taking another rest day.