The Bus

Yorke Peninsula coaches will, space permitting, carry an unboxed bicycle for the princely sum of $25 and all care no responsibility. Same for surf boards, not that I have one, but that tells you a bit about why people want to go to the Yorke Peninsula.  

If the bus cargo bay is full, bicycles (or surf boards) get bumped.  Given that YP coaches averaged 8 people per big coach, I decided not to worry about the possibility of bumping and booked my ticket to Wallaroo to make the most of my five-day 'weekend.'

The bus left at 4pm, bicycles needing to arrive at 3 to be eyeballed by the bus driver. "Some people box their bikes," chirped my telephone contact at YP Coaches. "Most of them just wrap it up in an old blanket or something."

Off to Vinnies I (actually Roger, I was working) went for a king size doona.  It was a nice doona, almost too nice to wrap around a bicycle in the cargo bay of a bus, but I did it anyway.  So focused was I on the process of wrapping and loading my bike that I unknowingly dropped my wallet which was immediately snaffled up by, as the security firm reviewing CCTV footage put it, "a gentleman walking by." Although I have issue with the "gentleman" descriptor.

Cue two hours of cancelling cards, reporting credit card fraud (said non-gentleman went on a fast food spree in the time it took to stop the card) and finally getting on my bus with a card borrowed from Roger and 5 minutes to spare. Lucky I turned up two hours early is all I can say.

The bus meandered north, stopping at every tin-pot town to drop off mail and passengers. Sometimes we even stopped at the designated bus stops instead of stopping determined by a shout of "Oi, bus driver Mike, can you drop me here instead?"

Past my favourite ruin.

Evening shadows lengthened over the Yorke Peninsula, with tantalising glimpses of the Gulf St Vincent as we passed Port Wakefield. 

My route home lies on the other side of the quarry, through the wheat fields and down to the far away sea.

I landed like a bag lady with my candy-bag and large doona-wrapped parcel at the Wallaroo rotunda and rode the loaded bike to the Cornucopia Hotel, clocking up an impressive 2km for the first day of my tour.

Wallaroo: the remains of the copper smelter.

Wallaroo: Silos and bulk handling facility.

View from my window.

It can only get better.