On the Road Again

This weekend I'm in Gloucester for the Gloucester Writers Festival, then onto Canberra, Uluru and Sydney before heading south again to drive the 'Great Ocean Road'. Fingers crossed that Betsy is up to the job. A friend of mine theorises that the state of your car reflects the state of your health. Interesting then, that a couple of days after I unwittingly buy a car with a dodgy fuel gauge and a suspected leak in the air conditioning which leaves a puddle in the passenger foot-well, I'm diagnosed with liver/spleen disharmony and too much 'heat' by a scarily good acupuncturist. But, thirty little black pearls a day and I'm raring to go again. Maybe I should pop some in Betsy's the fuel tank, just in case.

Some of you wanted to see Betsy - so here she is, in all her splendour.

It seems to be standard practice here to 'bring your own', partly because food is so expensive now after the Queensland floods, but also because 24 hour shops are few and far between, in fact, most places close at midday on Saturday for the weekend. Bliss! Imagine the chaos if that happened in Ireland of the UK? What would people do at the weekend? How would they worship at the alters of industry if the cathedrals of commercialism were closed? Oh yes, they would shop online. So in Betsy's boot, tucked in between my sense of adventure and expectation are my esky, my flask, my 'spork' (thanks Lucy) and my tin plate. All those years of packing 'tea-bags for the field' are finally paying off.

Later, I prepared a little feast for one; artisan bread rolls, tapenade, garden tomatoes and cheese, perfectly ripe pears and Anzac biscuits (estimated calorific value of 2000). As the drunken sun slid behind the Bucketts, I devoured a little slice of heaven on the veranda of my unexpectedly fabulous little B&B.

After almost two months on the farm, I did feel a little sad as George, Jean, Jean's daughter and grand-daughter all waved me off. The resident family of plovers provided me a low-flying escort as I headed down the pot-holed lane where I learned about pace while shovelling gravel with George in 34 degrees. Any sense of poignancy soon evaporated as Mother Nature threw big, fat sunbeam spears through the tree canopy and decorated Bago Head in a rainbow. I was on my way, and feeling utterly privileged.