20/08/2021 Around the Dam: Greenup Meeting Place

As a child on a cattle property in western Qld, my growing years were shaped by water or its absence. Brief years of flood and good fishing were in counterpoint to years of brutal drought. We pumped our water from stinking diminishing holes in a river turning to dust, dotted with the bones of animals that bogged and died.

That slightly macabre introduction is by way of explaining why I still thrill at the sight of water running in a creek or a dam brimming over. The sea is ok but give me an inland watercourse with a blue wren in the undergrowth, a storm of wild budgies in the sky, and a pelican 800km from the coast and my heart will sing. Which is why we've ended up staying at Greenup for quite a few 'just one more' days.

Another beautiful sunrise.

Having a really good cafe right on site has helped considerably when settling into heavy-duty relaxing. We've felt a noble compulsion to spend money there, all in the cause of supporting the struggling rural economy of course.

We do have the bikes on board so the relaxing  isn't excuse enough to ignore riding altogether. Well not for me anyway, so I took myself off on a little jaunt around the dam.

I was rewarded by regular vistas of the dam along the way.

The ride was perfect. The weather was warm, but not too hot. The sun shone between showers of clouds with virga (rain which falls but doesn't quite get to the ground), producing random rainbows. There was negligible traffic, the wattle bloomed brightly, and even when I had to spend 3km on the highway I was bothered by only two trucks.

Mailbox of the day. I think it's meant to be a motorbike but I'll claim it as a bicycle.

I got off the highway quickly and had the pleasure of this little road beside the railway line.

Back at camp in the evening, after sacrificing ourselves for a pot of tea and hummingbird cake, we built a fire in preparation for cooking our tea. Right on cue, along came Shelley, the owner of Greenup, on her evening rounds in her buggy.

"Hi guys!" She said, " I've brought some good wood for you! Let's get you a decent fire!" And before we could say "Thank you but we're planning to cook on these coals", she had built us a bonfire, cheerfully filled us in on the history of the river and how they had to dig it out to get water in the drought, and roared off to the next camp. Out of respect for her good intentions we waited until she had gone before pulling the fire apart and cooking  burning our pancakes on the now-too-hot coals.  Although there could have been other reasons for the lack of pancake quality like lack of implements and the difficulty turning pancakes without melting our plastic spoon.

The good wood made a great fire once we no longer wanted to cook.

Pancakes ingested, Shelley's good wood made a handy fire to keep the chilly night at bay while we tried unsuccessfully to identify which frogs we could hear.

Another stunning sunset.

Sadly, we leave Greenup tomorrow. We will have a few days of uncertain phone connection, so normal programming will resume when possible.