Day 140 | Kings Canyon Resort campground: it's not supposed to be raining like this, ie, continuously

42 km | zzOz total: 7,246 km

Water pools on the roof of The Palace so periodically I tug on the sides of the tent to let it drain. Maybe a design flaw, it’s waterproof enough, but the fabric seems to stretch when wet.

The rain hasn’t let up for the last 7 hours, slow and steady, maybe always sounds worse than the reality, but here am I, marooned 30 kms from one of the most magnificent places in the Red Centre, Kings Canyon, waiting, not yet frustrated, knowing that eventually it must stop but pointless packing up currently.

Back before I initially left Melbourne I made a decision, not exactly off the cuff, I’d been contemplating it forever, to return to NZ, permanently. But first I wanted to have a decent look at this country I’d spent so much time in, where I’d had glimpses of the other, interior, country but not come to any real understanding.

But decision made, a relationship spectacularly combusted, it took a while to untangle myself from the magnificent city, Melbourne, where I’d spent the last 18 years. Tidying up life, work and the little paraphernalia I had acquired took a while, in the meantime I was in Limbo, trapped between Heaven and Hell, neither part of the city, not yet immersed in that future.

Eventually I managed to disentangle myself and departed for a 2000 km circuit to Canberra just before Christmas, to revisit some old ghosts, but where any memory of me had been fully erased. Another month’s work and it was early February before I embarked for this new freedom.

So patience boy, it’ll all work out.