I'd Forget My Head if It Wasn't Screwed On

We drove down to Port Hughes, stopping in at Tea & Treasures to pick up some home-made Rocky Road to have with our thermos coffee at the Port Hughes jetty.  After coffee we planned to tag-team the bicycle ride home, one of us leaving from Port Hughes and the other leaving the car half-way  and riding onwards.  This grand plan, of course, relied on each of us carrying their own set of car keys.

So I forgot my car keys, didn't I?

Well, the sun doesn't set til late here on the bottom of Australia, so we could take a bit more time.  Roger would start from Port Hughes and I would cool my heels on the jetty for a while and then meet him halfway, conduct the Ceremony Of Handing Over The Keys, and continue on my bicycling way.

All sorted then, we settled in for our cup of coffee.

Let's get that thermos out.  What thermos is that?  The one that's on the kitchen bench at home, that's the one we want.  

 

Oops.  Never mind.    And then to add insult to our injury the home cooked Rocky Road had chilli flavouring and noodles instead of coconut.  Oh my shocked tastebuds! We should have returned it for false advertising, but in the end I did quite like the chilli...

Off Roger went on his bicycle.  I wandered down to the end of the jetty to watch everyone not catching crabs and fish.  One old fella caught a squid, much to the delighted horror of every prepubescent child in the vicinity. The post pubescent children were much too busy with elaborate courting rituals involving much squealing and jumping off jetties to take notice of any squid, no matter how delightfully horrifying it was to their little brothers and sisters.

South of Port Hughes is a white beach that curves to the horizon and begs to be explored.

 

Jetty appreciation completed, I drove the 15 terrifying kilometres up the Spencer Highway to an intersection with the rail trail where Roger and I would meet. Why terrifying, you ask? Well, first of all a grain haulage truck saw fit to tailgate me to such an extent that I couldn't contemplate slowing down to turn right and instead had to bail out into the first available road on the left. Back on the highway once Mr Grain Truck Impatience had roared on his way, the little white car behind me took my indicating to turn right as a courteous invitation to overtake and took it upon himself to roar up my right hand side like nobody's business. He should consider himself lucky that I saw him in time and let him go, uncrashed, on his merry and oblivious way.

I was quite glad to get off the highway and park under a tree where I could get myself and my bike sorted in peace and quiet and with the help of a thousand flies while I waited for Roger to arrive.

With the Great Key Swap safely conducted I abandoned the rail trail in search of new ground, setting off across the billowing wheat paddocks to Old Wallaroo Road, keeping my fingers crossed that the last grain trucks for the day would already have passed on their way to the bulk storage facilities.

Sheep made a nice change of scenery from wheat.

Old Wallaroo Road was the best of South Australian country roads: wide, flat, a nice gravel surface with minimal corrugations and sandy patches. I tootled along with the comfort of a brisk tailwind, watching the Wallaroo silos gradually rise above the wheat fields to the north.

 

The problem with a tailwind is all the flies that try to hitch a ride on your face.  Thankfully I had not forgotten my fly net.

I came into town past the bulk storage pads which were a hive of activity with trucks and augers and hi-visibility men driving around in self-important utes doing grain management stuff, not to mention a million pigeons trying as hard as they could to set the pigeon wheat-eating record. The road had a distinct yellow tint from all the fallen wheat and I (possibly imaginatively) was sure I could smell flour as a result of all the wheat crushed by truck tires on the road.

The piles are growing.

 

I took the long way home, hugging the foreshore past the jetty, around the marina, etc, etc, until I rolled into the garage and scared the living daylights out of the Young Cat, which had been quietly supervising the neighbourhood through the front screen door. Roger had already rescued the thermos from its forlorn perch on the kitchen bench, emptied it out, and put it away.  A bottle of wine had fallen into his pocket as he drove through Wallaroo, and he was making the most of that instead.

Just another sunset, cloudy this time.

I joined him.