Milang: Intermission.

We booked a cottage in Milang to while away the 6 day gap between one house sit and the next. Sandilira was just over the road from Lake Alexandrina and had powerful air conditioning which was extra helpful because we arrived in the middle of a heat wave.  

Sandilira: home for almost a week.

The streets of Milang were deserted: everyone stayed home and tried to stay cool. Mind you, the streets of Milang were usually pretty deserted anyway, but the heat haze shimmering over the bitumen wasn't usual for Milang.

I opened the fridge to put away our groceries and oh my goodness me, was I surprised! There was enough food in there to feed a small army for a month: milk, bread, butter, strawberry jam and a punnet of strawberries, a dozen eggs, a large container of mushrooms, and a medium-sized pig's worth of bacon. Not to mention 6 small tubs of yoghurt, one large tub of yoghurt, and all the breakfast cereals in the cupboard. This was not a hardship posting. We settled in for a comfortable stay.

By evening the southerly had roared in and the heat dialled back from furnace to merely stinking hot. Pelicans patrolled the lake and cormorants roosted on every jetty pole. 

It's a very shallow lake.

Overwhelmed by all the food in the fridge, we avoided decision making and walked down to the pub. I bagsed a table outside and Roger went to order at the bar, where two patrons exhibited low energy levels consistent with the end of a heatwave. The bar man clocked Roger as not-a-local and was brusque: "No food tonight. No meals on Tuesdays."

We had to go home and face the fridge after all.

I got up early the next morning and rode my bicycle out beside the lake. Pelicans and swans bobbed in the shallow waters, and wind rippled over the reed beds.

At my turn-around point a gravel road called me to follow it off between paddocks of crisp dry grass dotted with fat grey sheep.  Then I was further seduced by a little gravel track  marked as a "No Through Road." After all, everyone knows that "No Through Road" really means you've got a fair chance of getting through, it might just be a bit tricky.  Some risks are worth taking, though. Off I went.

I rode the ridge line between deep ruts baked into dry soil, and walked my bike through patches of sand.  Sheep ran away in terror and a silly kangaroo got all confused about how to get away through the fence, and just had an on-the-spot panic attack as I passed by.

Wild artichokes clustered in a gully, all the colour sucked out of them by the sun and every leaf ending in a spike quite capable of puncturing a bike tyre.

Ouchies.

The "No Through" road delivered me eventually to a proper gravel road which took me arrow-straight all the way back to Milang. Roger sat outside in the shade, drinking a cup of tea and watching pelicans.

"I just had cereal and toast," he said. "I couldn't face the fridge and anyway I couldn't get the stove to turn on."

Bacon will have to wait for another day.

Could be worse.