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Morgan to Cadell: Dreaming of Salad Sandwiches

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Well, I'm not exactly speeding up on this ride. I woke to grumbling thunder and splattering rain: not a lot of either but enough to be a bother. I killed time by buying snacks for the journey in the Morgan IGA, which wasn't the most inspiring of shops. "I'll buy lunch at the Cadell General Store,"I thought, dreaming of a juicy salad sandwich. In the mean time a group of us stood patiently at the till waiting for the proprieter who was nowhere to be seen. An old man of questionable moral fibre sized up the situation, grabbed a newspaper and a chocolate bar, and scarpered without paying at all. Rain still fell.  I sat under shelter at the Tourist Information centre and played the Easter Accommodation Treasure Hunt. South Australia's school holidays started at theEaster long weekend and and I didn't have enough arms and legs to pay for accommodation anywhere near the river. Every man, woman, their children, the dog, cat, and chickens were coming to the Riverl...
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Hiatus 3: Working in Morgan

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  "I wonder who'll be the first person to be buried here?" mused Harvey, a Royal Navy Surveyor helping out with the creation of the Morgan Cemetery back in 1889.  Little did he know that the very next day he would drown in the river and the dubious honour of being the first inhabitant of the Morgan Cemetery would belong to him. The cemetery was tucked away discreetly on the edge of town, but not so the morgue.  Victims of accidents on the river were dropped off in Morgan via steamer, and a little morgue was built right at the ferry terminus, a receiving house as it were for those en route to the cemetery.  The morgue was still there, but thankfully the only corpses in there now belong to spiders and flies. Morgue details. I took the scenic walk around Morgan, dutifully reading all the information in my pamphlet, and now I share it with you whether you want it or not. Morgan is in the traditional lands of the  Ngaiawang  people.  Nganguruku  people...
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Bakery Auto-detecting Bicycle

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 My bicycle has a serious problem. It seeks out bakeries and then forces me to visit them. I am powerless to resist. I think it just likes posing under pretty umbrellas It waited impatiently while I packed up my camp at the Murbko Lutheran and did battle with voracious ants. I ate my boring breakfast of crackers and peanut butter all the while a bicycle whispered in my ear of coffee and cake. It huffed and puffed as I stopped at yet another lookout to take yet another slew of river photos. Take one of me, too! It grumbled as I came to a halt in the Morgan Conservation Park, seduced by clouds of Darling lilies whose scent and sight took me right back to my childhood on the flood plain of the Condamine. It reluctantly dawdled along the access track past National Park campgrounds and river shacks full of people packing up their weekends and heading home on a sunny Sunday midday. And it complained about having to share the ferry with a ute, a barking dog, and yet another taciturn fe...
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First Lock, Second Bridge.

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  South Australia had elections and I was up bright and early, complimentary weetbix all eaten, ready to do my democratic duty on the way out of town. "I don't think you can vote in Swan Reach," said the other woman staying at the pub. "My daughter works here and she's voting in Nildottie."  Which I found surprising because of Nildottie's general closed-ness, and because the AEC assured me that I could vote at the Swan Reach Town Hall. The AEC was right of course.  Alas, I got there too early for the democratic sausage sizzle. "Never mind, I'll get one at Blancheview," thought I. It was not to be: in a thoroughly unAustralian move Blancheview was not providing democracy sausages. I feel cheated and may start a political party dedicated to ensuring that everyone who turns up to vote is entitled, nay forced, to take a democracy sausage with or without onion. Democratic duty done with ease and alacrity, I took the ferry over the river again (s...
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