With only 40 km distance between Wilmington – or should I say “Beautiful Valley”? – and Quorn I had envisaged the day to be a pretty straightforward, maybe even uneventful day. To my surprise, it threw a few interesting and unexpected events at me. The first one struck me only a few minutes after leaving the caravan park, shortly after passing the last house of the township: the wind subsided! After more than a week of continuous battling I could hardly believe my luck. The bike nearly moved on its own. Bliss at last. And the reason for this unexpected ease should stay visible for most of the journey today: towering Mount Brown. Leaving Wilmington I could make out its broad shoulders. In 1802 botanist Robert Brown and his party had been the first white people to set foot on it when they spent an uncomfortable night on its summit, being exhausted and lacking water, before they returned to Captain Matthew Flinders’ ‘Investigator’ in Spencer’s Gulf. This morning I was the happy benefactor of this argillaceous “ridge of craggy mountains” as Flinders had described it, for it effectively shielded me from any nasty wind for more than half of the journey to Quorn.
Flying along with pedals turning fast and spirits running high, l was doubly shocked when the second ‘surprise’ struck. It very nearly struck in a real sense: my first ignorant driver. After more than a week on the road I encountered the first individual who certainly fitted into the countless stories about Australian drivers who, as a matter of principle, seemed to be reckless steering-wheel maniacs. Making a total mockery of all the assurances I had given my friends only yesterday, this one most certainly matched the characters they had been describing.
Whoever overtook me in a small truck on a ruler straight stretch of road about halfway to Quorn knew a lot about hunting spirit, and nothing about driving. Without any car coming in the opposite direction there should have been ample space for a small truck and a push bike. However, the driver just simply ignored me. He thundered along, his left tyres close to the margin of the bitumen, totally determined not to use a steering wheel on a straight stretch of road. Maybe he had planned on testing his ‘roo-bars’ in a collision with a cyclist, whatever his motivation, he certainly managed to frighten the hell out of me. Not used to that kind of treatment for days on end, I only realised what was going on behind my back shortly before the encounter was set to take place. In a frantic move of pedals I slid onto the unsealed margin of the road, running lips and tongue through an inexhaustible stock of curses in English and German. Right there and then, Kevin Bloody Wilson would have been proud of me. In fact, just there, beside me, his language would have appeared like the sweetest, most refined Sunday School talk!
Anyway, I got out of it, and soon surprise number three, a truly exceptional one, was to pop up. Coming out of Quorn’s post-office, I was greeted with the following question: “Excuse me, Sir, would you mind telling me what kind of a bike you have got?” On looking up from the stamps that I had bought I was more than sure that I had fallen victim to a mirage. Looking me straight in the eye was – one of the employees of the Arkaroola-Mt. Painter nature-sanctuary, my final destination! How could this be? There were so many roads, so many places of interest, so many options to choose from before setting out! When I had talked to people in Arkaroola, before setting out from Adelaide, I had not made may mind up as to what places I would visit. Later on, I kept changing my plans, and now, by sheer coincidence, our paths should cross at the same place and the same time. I was stunned!
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