Milang to Wellington: Finally Fully Loaded

 I took photos down at the Milang jetty, wind snapping in the flags left over from Australia day celebrations, and rolled out of town with the usual wobbles that happen the first time you ride a loaded bicycle.

Lake Alexandrina lay on my right for the first half of the day, although it was often out of sight beyond reed beds, dairy farms, hay paddocks, and vineyards. When I could, I took to little gravel roads to avoid the traffic on the bitumen.

The field was poor for the Gate/Mailbox Creativity Competition. Points for trying, but lacking in the creativity department.

Decision point came at 11:00 at the turn off from Mosquito Creek Road to Tolderol Game Reserve. I'd planned to camp at the reserve to break the ride, given I wasn't bike fit at all and I didn't want to get too excited and overdo things on the first day. But it was so early in the day! The wind howled and I knew there was nothing at the Reserve, apart from a bird hide and a picnic table at one of the sites but some smarty pants had already booked that one. So I kept going, and the road gradually turned toward the wind, and the wind got stronger and gustier, and let's just not talk about the wind any more.

Sand drifting across the road from the salt pans.

Early lunch on a quiet little road, because I knew the busy bitumen was just around the corner.

Wellington inched closer past salt pans, and salt farms, and the trucks associated with salt farms.  

Grape guardians.

Derelict windmill, victim of solar pumps.

The wind howled across this open land. I struggled to stay on the bike.

I watched the tents in the Wellington Caravan Park flapping in the wind as I rolled to a stop at reception. The proprieter knew his audience well. "I've got an unpowered site for $30," he said. "Or you can have a donga for $40." The donga had a real bed and walls but in all other aspects was a tent, relying on the camp kitchen and the ablutions block for the necessities of life. I took it anyway.

Home for the night: donga #3. The garden belongs to the neighbour.

Heres a little fact about Wellington: it was the original crossing of the Murray for anyone and anything travelling between Melbourne and Adelaide until the bridge was built at Murray Bridge in 1879, and Wellington lost its importance but retained a free car and passenger ferry. I caught the ferry over to East Wellington and back again, just because I could, and then I sat on the deck of the Wellington Hotel and indulged in a spot of ferry-watching. Down below the beer garden a luxurious house boat bobbed gently at its mooring. Nobody on the pub deck knew who owned it, but the consensus was that we'd all rather like to be houseboat people.

As I watched ferries and houseboats the elderly population of Wellington drifted in to the bar for what was obviously a daily catch-up ritual conducted at full volume to compensate, as I learned, for Vic's difficult with his new hearing aids. My peace and ferry-watching quiet got up and left and I went with it, back to my not-a-tent with solid walls for the night.

Today's flower: Evening Primrose.