The farthest you can get from Christian generosity and his five loaves and fishes

And as day sidles in to evening we need another place to stay and so the usual twice round the high street of the nearest town yields another Butlin's style motel.

Getting bored waiting for Phil to complete the booking I become fascinated by the way the trees grow

And the way the bark sits around them. They reminded me of this.
Indulge me...

Anyway to more grown up things. 20 minutes had gone and I needed a wee so going in search of P I find the host regaling him with stories of having visited the Isle of Man to participate in the TT Races in 1972..

I was instantly enamoured by the references to her indoors and the little woman, who turned out to be the second little woman, so beat a hasty retreat to the room with a mock Crown Derby thimble covered by a doily (?) which constituted our milk ration. The post war theme continued with the room inspection which had all the mod cons including a trapdoor in the wall which the camp commandant can open in the morning to slide your breakfast gruel and glass of water onto the stylish melamine sideboard. P knows how to treat a girl.

P regales the tale of walking into the place and signing the registration form to which mein host responds:

- Never had yoo down for a Pom...yoo're the raaawng colla! You aint got no woyte folk back in Larndun now...just the "OTHERS"......droyving raaaand in BMWs and drippin with gold. "THEY" are still poor heeya.

P thought he'd fallen into an episode of Bless This House - the unexpurgated version.

I'm thinking must be a while since he's been to Sydney to check out the "Whoyte" population numbers - he'd have apoplexy ...with a bit of luck.

Right dinner time...and what delights await us in this enlightened cosmopolitan metropolis...well. How's about this for a fish and chip shop setting; there is a landing sticks out into the lake with a canopy over it and you just watch the sun go down.

 

 

 

In the absence of recognising any other name on the menu, except salmon,  P enquires of the fryer as the nature of the white fish, which she just takes as a request and so I get white fish and chips. We also wished we had known it was BYOB so we could have added an air of sophistication to the the shark and chips...and the "OTHER"'s kids jumping off the the jetty.

 

Traveller's note  1: if the name on the board is white fish then it's shark.

Traveller's note 2: if you have a hang up about eating ugly food and the name implies it might be ugly then check out the entire fish population before going to said country.

 

The following morning the cockateals wake us and we pass on the gruel and step up our game eating bran flakes from a cup. We had hoped to sneak out and drop the key through a slot in the door but the President of the Society for Racial Harmony was waiting to inform us how much his business was worth and how he only made a profit for the tax man of $6 a year.

 

And to the grand finale:

 

We are joined by his erm.... Bosnian wife of whom he asks permission to tell us a joke..prefaced with:

 

-"Yooo're not relijus are yoo? How de yoooo feel about Muslims......."

And there endeth the lesson with more tyre rubber left on the forecourt than the starting grid, Isle of Man circa 1972. We're off to look for more human dinosaurs.

Like buses the world over

Okay Day 7 into our antipodean adventure and 2,300 km and Kanga and Roo have been conspicuous by their absence and we are on the way back to Syd and Junior, wending our way up new bits of the coast.

But first some high drama in Cann River where they serve morning coffee in 3 cafes within spitting distance of each other. Memories of another road trip in North east America come to mind, right down to the body hanging from the balcony....Miss Kitty ain't gonna look out of place here.

As the welcoming committee plan for the next stage coach to arrive in 2016....we are lazily sipping our coffee when a siren goes off and we sit bolt upright, searching for the nearest gas cupboard or upturned bath, expecting the wind to whip up and sky go dark. The lack of reaction is eery, so we sit and we sit and then out of the cafe comes the coffee mate and we ask what's going on....

-Thad'll be a bush foya warning

Then sits to sup his coffee with a silent "Yup".

That's ok then, Corporal Jones clearly not required to galvanise the troops. The siren goes off and 10 minutes later 2 fire engines and assorted fire troopers fresh as daisies with not a care in the world jump out to collect their orders...not a word said. Now I Know these siren efforts are loud but I can't believe that this one hailed from the Northern Territories....

That's laid back Stralia for yooo.

Back on the road I am being hypnotised as I scour the bush and as we hit  another suburbia I have nodded. Brakes screech and my head comes within a  whichitee grubs whisker of the dashboard and P is shouting (quite loudly for him) "Kangaroos, kangaraoos"!.

And where did it say in the book of Noah

"And forsooth when yon floods have passed God told me I should shut set down the bouncy thing with the boxing mitts near the 16th hole!"

And not just one, but a whole posse

I am off on one, trying to outstrip my last record of 70 koala pictures in under 20 minutes....

But the head honcho gets to his feet...Jesus, look at the pecks on that!

But then he decides I am too close for comfort ...I am actually about 20 yards away with my telescopic zoom but too close for him clearly, and the expression is so..."Bugger off you kangaroo paparazzi"

Then there is a huff sound and I am back in the car examining the dashboard again.

But just one last sneak of Roo even though he isn't taking his medicine:

 

 

Everybody say "Aw" bearing in mind he might grow up to look like his dad.