Good Morning Carnarvon!
Low 8°c (46°F) – High 26°c
(79°F)
It was a pretty easy pack-up this morning as we really only
had to drive about 100 metres to the unpowered section of the camp. Before leaving though we heard that a guy
camping two doors up had his car broken into and his wallet stolen last
night. I won’t start on the silly move
of leaving ANYTHING valuable in your car overnight ANYWHERE, I mean that would
happen at home let alone up here, but still not a nice start to anyone’s day
and a really good reminder to not be complacent about leaving anything out.
Relocated to our new site and everything switched over from
power to either battery or gas, we headed out first of all to do a bit of
grocery shopping to top up supplies.
This included meat as most of the pre-cooked meals I brought along have
now been consumed. With that packed
safely away in the van, we headed out to have more of a look around Carnarvon
surrounds.
A lot of the trees tell a story about Carnarvon’s weather as
many of those located close to town are on a severe lean and there are levy
banks built all around the area surrounding the township. What I didn’t realize is that Carnarvon is a
huge fruit growing area, mainly bananas, tomatoes and mangos but also melons
and grapes. I’m assuming eating grapes
as there don’t appear to be any wineries in the area. Plantation after plantation followed along
the roads to the east of the township.
We spotted a huge flock of Major Mitchell’s Cockatoos which flew from
some trees on one side of the road into a plantation on the other side and as
we pulled up to take some photos, the owner of the plantation was just driving
out one of the tracks.
He stopped obviously checking what we were up to and we asked
if it was OK to take photos of the birds in his vineyard to which he said that
was fine. Then he asked if we might
happen to be looking for some work and talked about how none of the growers in
the area could get workers and he didn’t know what he was going to do if he
couldn’t get workers soon. We said we
hoped things worked out and the workers returned to the area but the distress
and emotion on his face and in his voice as he sank his face into his hands and
let them drop left us feeling sad and helpless and even a day later as I write
this I have a lump in my throat and teary eyes thinking about that
encounter. It’s one thing to read about
the difficulties these farmers are having but a whole different story when you
are faced with the emotion of the impact. It’s a meeting we’ll likely never
forget and we wished we could have done something – anything – to make this
man’s day better.
Our next set of shots a little further down the road were surreal
in light of our previous experience where a man dressed in a gas mask and
protective clothing was driving up and down a covered tomato crop,
spraying. It was such a ghostly image as
we observed from outside the shadecloth enclosure.
From the bananas to the palms and bougainvilleas growing
seemingly like weeds (making us once again jealous of those tropical gardens
that we wish we could have at home) it has quite the tropical feel in this area.
Not so surprising however when you realize
that Carnarvon has roughly the same latitude as Bundaberg in Queensland.
Heading back to camp, we arrived just on sunset and just in
time to watch this week’s NRL match which didn’t have a happy ending for the
Melbourne Storm supporters. Shane headed
out to order a pizza for dinner, which unfortunately had about as much flavor
as the ice-cream we had earlier in the day - and a final pack up done in
preparation for moving on tomorrow.
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