Sunday, August 21, 2005

Cairns to Darwin Day 2

We all got up at 5:30am and were out of Croydon by 6:30am. Today I ended up sitting next to Rich. Turns out he also had a guitar onthe bus and has been playing for a couple of years, so we had a lot of things to talk about. His birthday also happens to be July 28th (mine is July 26th). I'm hoping to Jam sometime with him over the trip.

After 3 hours finally stopped at the Burke and Wills truck Stop. This is where I remembered I had wanted to start collecting stickers of all the places I visited on my trips before I return to Montreal. Evry sticker I collected I put on my guitar case. While at the truck stop I walked across to this Camp Draft which is this kind of cattle competition where the Cowboys (I think they're called Wranglers out here) ride a horse and try to lead the cattle around certain post in a certain amount of time. I was lucky enough to witness a cow run STRAIGHT into the wall, hit with a good amount of force and fall back over onto it's side. It was SO FUNNY! The cow was out cold for a good 5 seconds, got up and ran to the gate.

For lunch we stoppeed at Gregory creek which was loads of fun. We had BBQ food and afterwards I jumped into the creek which had a bit of current so it was almost like a water slide. Started at one end and it pushed you to the other end. The weather was beautiful, not a clousd in the sky and even got to play some frisbee with Angus.

After lunch we ended up at a national park where we did canoeing and saw these tiny little falls, did some swimming and I walked up this mountian area called the stacksa dn got a great view of everything including the river were we canoed. At the top I saw this little old lady (not from Pasedina) who walked with a CANE! I was tired from the climb and this old lady made it up (must have been at least 70!) As I walked down she started to as well but at her rate it would have taken her about an hour (took me 5 minutes).

We drove for one hour through Lawen Hill Cattle Stattion to Adel's Grove where we stayed the night. Dinner looked tasty but after I pilled the food on my plate, I found out it was pork and not chicken! The staff there was too kind though and someone brought me a steak pie. I t was fine enough for me but another staff member saw what I was eating and was like "THAT'S what they gave you for dinner, no no no! Do you want some chicken snitzel?" so I got 2 meals.

During dinner who walks in? Kimbo and Graham, the two cowboys. They looked drunk again and Graham was pretending to be blind. Tuirns out they were going to scam the place but when they saw us, thought we'd recognize them so they dropped the act. What a bunch of characters!

After dinner, got to jam with Rich. He showed me how to play the riff from Zombie by The Cranberries and I taught him About a Girl by Nirvana. It was a lot of fun to play and talk to someone else about the guitar.

The rest of the night was playing cars with the others and then hitting the bed for some sleep.

2 comments:

Glen said...

Playing cars??? Man, you must have hit the jackpot if you were playing cars. Is it like a demolition derby?

Budman said...

Haha! Yes we were playing CARS! We found a whole bunch just lying around (parked) and they happened to be unlocked (we broke into them) and drove around a la Jackass style!

So sue me that I make typos!