Day 3: Augathella

Rain, rain, rain.

I didn’t think it rained much in these parts, but the heavens opened last night. Although I seem to recall reading recently that some of the roads we will be travelling have been closed due to flooding, so perhaps I should have paid more attention.

In any case, we woke this morning to discover Percy was surrounded by water. The view from inside looking out wasn’t promising.

But outside it was even worse. We were surrounded 🙁

I think I finished last night’s post by saying that the pub was in full swing. It all got a bit crazy around 10.00pm, with a woman screaming out something like “will you all just cut it out”, followed by cars revving, and then screaming up the road.

Another big Friday night at the Augathella pub.

Our Ying and Yang was a bit mixed up last night. Or perhaps we reverted to our traditional sleeping roles … MBW put her head on the pillow and was instantly making sleeping noises, while I tossed and turned for a couple of hours.

Despite me being awake and MBW being asleep, she reported to me this morning that the fun at the pub got even wilder around 1.00am, with more shouting, and engines revving, and cars screaming, and tyres squealing.

I’d obviously managed to fall asleep, because I missed all of that. Or maybe it was the earplugs that blocked out reality.

It turns out that I didn’t hear the rain either, but apparently it rained heavily during the evening. There was plenty of evidence of that when I woke.

Today was intended to be a quiet rest day in Augathella. We only had two things that we really needed to achieve today: getting milk because we were getting low, and getting coffee from the local cafe because … well, because we needed coffee and we are not connected to power, which makes the coffee machine kinda useless.

So that was it for the day. Coffee and milk.

We had a surprise FaceTime call with a couple of our favourite little people (Teddy and Lili), so that topped up our emotional tanks for the morning before we set off in search of coffee and milk.

The “Friendly Grocer” – staffed by not-so-friendly people, as it turns out – advertises that they are open “5.5 days/week”, so we had a working assumption that if we hadn’t purchased milk by 12.00 noon, we wouldn’t be purchasing milk any time soon.

So off we set.

We were also aware that the rodeo was on tonight, and the lady in the butcher said it was an easy walk to the rodeo place, just up the road. So we thought that it was worth an afternoon’s entertainment.

We successfully achieved the coffee and milk tasks, and headed back to Percy … only to be greeted by a male voice calling out “anybody home?”.

Meet Larry. Larry is a retiree (like us, it seems), who gets around in a triple axle van and he makes and sells caravan accessories like A-frame covers, clotheslines, spare wheel covers, and stickers for your van.

Larry went to great lengths to tell us that he has a ”lady friend” but she is away at the moment, and that he likes to meet up with other 40+ solo travellers for companionship.

To be honest, it all sounded a bit creepy to me and I felt like I was being groomed for something unpleasant, but maybe I imagined it. Although in retrospect, I think that Larry was pretty harmless.

Larry also gave us a status report on the rodeo. He’d ridden his bicycle over there this morning and that “he’s seen more action at a funeral”. Noting that this was only about 11.00am and the rodeo didn’t open until 12.00, and didn’t start until 2.00pm, that may have been a harsh assessment by Larry, but it certainly had me questioning whether a Saturday night rodeo was worth the $15 each (“cash only”) for the outing.

The funniest part of the whole experience though, was Larry’s inability to pronounce words correctly.

Every time he said rodeo, it came out as rode-ao (as in Rodeo Drive), and every time he said Barcaldine, it came out as Barcal-dine (rather than Barc-aldine).

You had to be there. But I thought it was funny.

So the afternoon was just another happy retiree experience: having lunch, reading our books, having a nap, and talking about bowel movements.

Or maybe I imagined the bowel movement conversation …?

So at about 1.30pm, we started the 15 minute trek to the rodeo. Which took us closer to 30 minutes. It seemed that the butcher lady lied to us.

We watched the peewee barrel races (I think that’s what they are called when you ride your horse around three barrels and back to the finish line), then the juniors, then the adults.

If you look closely in that top photo, you can see a second set of legs behind the horse’s front legs – that was mum holding the kid so she didn’t fall off.

And the girl in the second photo was more interested in waving at the officials than anything else.

As the contestants got older and more experienced, there was more speed, more excitement, more spectacular falls, and more swearing.

Like the lady whose horse decided that it didn’t want to play this silly barrel game, and just wanted to run full speed around the outside of all the barrels with the rider screaming “I can’t stop this $#*&ing horse …”. No points for that effort I’m sorry to say, but it gave us a giggle.

So that was the barrel races, and then we had a 30 minute break (that lasted 90 minutes) before the main event. If I heard the ringmaster say “we are not too far off starting now …” once, I heard it a thousand times.

The main event. Bull riding. Bronco riding. Bareback riding.

Danger. Excitement. Broken bones. Clowns. Injuries. Spectacular falls into the mud. Ambulances.

The main event was to be conducted in the main arena, so we grabbed ourselves a couple of steak burgers, and settled in for the night.

I’ve never been to a rodeo before, but at least now when I say “it’s not my first rodeo”, I can say it truthfully.

I’m really not sure how to describe the evening, except to point out a few of the things that stood out. There were flies. Lots and lots of flies. And I reckon I inhaled more passive cigarette smoke tonight than I have previously in my whole life. It seems that the usual rules of smoking don’t apply in Augathella.

The bar was the place to be, but there was no real surprises there, given our experience with the pub last night.

I also felt a little under-dressed, as I had neglected to pack my boots and spurs. I also neglected to pack a decent jumper, and the night grew steadily colder.

At some point in the evening, MBW suggested that I walk back to camp and get the car and some chairs. Fortunately the nice man at the ticket gate – once I had divulged my plans to him to walk back to town – stopped the very next vehicle heading out the gate and instructed “young Luke” to “drive this man back to town”. So I didn’t have to walk after all.

Thanks Luke (who used to live in town but now lives in Cunnamulla, and who had no working seatbelts in his car.)

I can also report that they love the Land Cruisers out here. At least we fit it there.

Anyhow, the rodeo was probably what I expected, and far more messy that you see on television. MBW kept up a running commentary that “it doesn’t happen like that on ’Heartland’”.

This is how it unfolded for one rider …

Yep, it was all a bit of a blur. No points scored, and probably no likelihood of him ever having children in the future. Maybe not walking without a limp, either.

I expect that there are going to be a number of people feeling sore and sorry tomorrow, if the number of people thrown from a horse or bull and hit the ground badly is any indication. And then there was the one or two that needed medical assistance.

And I expect that there will be an ever greater number of people nursing very sore heads in the morning too.

It’s a funny thing – at home I never have cash and never carry it, yet in Augathella cash is king. Cash for entry to the rodeo, cash for the steak burgers, cash for drinks.

No EFTPOS, just cash.

I’m going to have to go in search of an ATM, because I only have enough cash left for the $20 donation for camping in this park for two nights.

We are off to Dunblane (near Barcaldine) in the morning, for a couple of nights of something that promises to be spectacular. But that will be tomorrow’s news.

On the bright side, with the rodeo on tonight the pub is closed, so it will be a quiet night in town!

And ever better news is that I can see stars in the sky tonight. Not a cloud to be seen, so hopefully we will have a couple of nice sunny days ahead (as forecast), and everything will dry out.

Ciao

#Retirement2024