(written by Nancy)

Well, the karaoke went on until about 1am last night (singers getting progressively worse, as they tend to do after a few drinks) and the fireworks went on for some time after that so we were a little blurry when we finally got out of the tent this morning a bit after 7.

We had a great time chatting with Jan this morning about all things bike touring, each of us looking over the other’s gear as cycle tourists often do. Jan gave us some really good tips for riding in SE Asia and the names of some good spots to see. It left both of us very excited to get to Asia to ride as well as allaying some concerns about riding there. Just what we needed to keep up the spirits. Jan is heading into Kakadu and then will make his way down to Katherine before heading west.

Today we also said goodbye to Niki for the last time, as she is heading into Kakadu and we are heading north. She gave us some bread as a goodbye gift, together with her address and phone number in Orange so we can catch up the next time we make it out there. It’s been fun catching up with her at the various caravan parks – always nice to see a familiar friendly face when you roll into a new place.

We also saw a great bower bird this morning, fiercely protecting his ‘bower’. Bower birds collect bits and pieces of things of a certain colour and the males build a room of sorts from sticks to attract females. The females don’t nest in the bower – it is just a way the male bird shows off his building skills. In and around Sydney we used to see dark coloured bower birds and they usually collected things that were blue. So any straw, sugar packet, plastic lids, etc. that were blue and sitting on a table or the ground would quickly get picked up by the bird and taken back to its bower.

The bower bird at Pine Creek was a lighter brown/grey colour and his colours of choice were white and a bit of green. You can see in the picture all of the white bits and a few green bits right near his bower. Some other folks staying at the park put a red flower on his white pile and he quickly came out of the bower to move it off the white pile – he did this several times with other red bits. He clearly was not happy with red items!

So, after all the bird excitement and the goodbyes it was after 10 before we left the caravan park. Nice and hot. Thank goodness we had a relatively short day – only 55k to get to Hayes Creek. I can really feel the heat now and it seems like the humidity is starting to rise. The road was pretty busy with lots of caravans and there were a lot of road trains particularly once we’d gone past the entry to a new mine in the area. The speed limit here is 130km per hour – seems like way too fast for the road conditions, which are not very good. Very little shoulder and the road is pretty twisty and windy in places. We got off the road several times when we saw road trains behind us and got a few thank you toots in return.

We stopped for a drink and a sausage roll at the Emerald Springs roadhouse, at about 32k. From there it was straight to Hayes Creek, where we have a nice spot at the caravan park behind the roadhouse. There is nothing here other than the roadhouse and the caravan park. We used up the bread Niki gave us to make pb&j sandwiches for lunch and then hung out a bit at the tent looking over maps and plans for the next couple of days.

We’re having a beer now up at the roadhouse (Redback, a pretty decent WA beer) before we head back to the campsite to cook up some dinner. Should be a quiet night tonight – looking forward to some good sleep with no fireworks!

Tomorrow the plan is to go to Adelaide River and perhaps stay there a couple of days while we get some things sorted for our next leg. Then we plan to head into Litchfield National Park for a few days – looking forward to it as it is supposed to be a nice park with a few nice places to take a dip.