While Not Working

Morning plovers at Lake Bonney. I was worried about navigating the bridge where the Sturt Highway crossed the Murray a few kms from town. Putting off the moment, I wandered up the main street of Barmera on the way out of town. Barmera had all the shops a lakeside play town needed, plus a surprising art installation or two and a beautiful art deco movie theatre that was now a gallery. As it turned out the Sturt Highway was easily avoided. I trundled down narrow roads cloistered with grape vines, along tracks of bright red hard-packed sand, and found myself at Cobdogla where all sorts of attractions waited to be discovered. From Cobdogla a little gravel road escorted me along the Kaiser Spit, part of the Cobdogla game reserve. Sweet little waterside camp grounds came and went, each with their own fire pit. Birds sang and burbled in the trees and every so often a fisherman puttered by in a businesslike tinnie. I'd reached a quiet corner of the Murray, all wetlands and lagoons, submerg...

I caught the ferry back over the river.  I'm running out of ferries over the Murray: there's only one left now. My ride. Welcome swallows hitching a ride. Graham jumped out of his car to say hello when he saw me on Devlin Pound Road after catching the ferry back across the river in the morning. "I was on the ferry with you this morning and I really wanted to ask you what you're doing. So what are you doing?" I was really tempted to tell him I was swimming the English Channel, but I stuck with the obvious. We had a good old chat beside the road. Graham was with the RFS and they were on flood watch as the waters from the last rsin event out in the desert crept across the thirsty earth toward the Murray. "They're worried it will cut the Goyder Highway at Cadell Ck," said Graham. "I don't think so. Everything's so dry it's just getting absorbed, even in the hard country." Graham was involved in a straight line speed event at Gardine...