Come A Waltzing Matilda With Me

Who’ll Come A Waltzing Matilda With Me?

Day 2.

Got away to an early start to what turned out to be a very long day covering almost 1300 Kms and getting me to Adelaide at about 10 PM, there was gentle rain for about 1 hour not at all like the "bucketing down variety" we have been getting in Queensland recently.
There was a lot of water lying in the paddocks along the road in some places and even a couple where the water still covered the road surface the trucks shown here took little notice of it and as can be seen by the cloud of black exhaust smoke in the first photo actually accelerated into it for the benefit of my camera.

Later while travelling through the area known as the Hay Plains one I got the feeling that the flat earth society may have been right after all, it isn’t tree-less like the Nullabor Plains, rather the small, 20 foot tall, trees that are here seem mainly clustered on the horizon, mind you its so flat that the horizon in any direction is quite close.
There are many earth works visible as you gaze around, most if not all are to do with water, storing it in dams for stock to drink, diverting it away from things that must be kept dry, diverting it to places you want to get wet, all these low levee banks or mounds of earth stand out on the stark landscape.
A couple of these stirred my interest, the first was a raised platform about 5 feet high, 20 x 15 feet long/wide with one side tapered away to nothing, Warren and I saw these when we were here recently and wondered whether they were for unloading stock or machinery… the placement in the paddocks convinced me this wasn’t their function on this trip, I mused they may have been "School Boat Stops" for times of serious flooding when the "School Bus" could not get through? The mind plays tricks when you travel long distances alone!!!
Another feature that had me wondering was what appeared to be a very long levee bank, it appeared to be running in the wrong direction and proved to be an abandoned railway line… complete with one rail left in place… a good starting point if someone comes up with a mono-rail with the rail fixed to the earth instead of above ground, as I said travelling alone produces some strange thought patterns.
A rather strange thing occurred about this time as I watched the road tapering away in the distance it suddenly turned into a lake of shimmering water, a quick glance behind showed that the lake had surrounded me, have I mentioned that this is a very flat area? Here I was on an island in what had been a stark dry environment just seconds before.

Some of the earthworks mentioned were about 10 feet tall and were as close to a hill as would be found in a hundred mile radius of this place, in fact the tallest feature I found was this "Mini" mounted on its tall pole.
In a rest area where I had lunch again my mind wandered to a fanciful thought that the guard rails on two sides of this structure were held together with 48 ½ inch bolts and nuts while the shelter itself had to make do with only 28 3/8 inch bolts, admittedly there were also some welded brackets… I never promised you intelligent posts… but you must admit they’re different!!!!!

While I ate my lunch and counted bolts a family of Emu’s wandered past, knowing that Emu’s are very curious birds, no, not strange, more of an enquiring nature curious, I clapped my hands and waved my arms about a bit, this encouraged them to come close enough to get a photo for you, I have no doubt that had I stood on my head and waved my legs about they would have come close enough to share my lunch, which I have no doubt I would have disgorged had I stood on my head.

I met up with a swarm of locusts (grasshoppers) who spattered all over the front of my car the photo does not do justice to the mess they made and the one I took of the thousands of corpses littering the road didn’t come out at all????