Day 267 | Surprises keep coming: the long awaited Wiggle parcels arrive

UK to Perth parcel deliveries containing my bike bits averaged 5 working days. Order Sunday, unpack Friday.

UK to Alice: 6 weeks+.

I’m advised by a local there’s a reason: they are jetted into Sydney in the 5 days, transferred somehow to Adelaide. What happens next was unclear, I must have been distracted, but my thoughts are that it takes a while to round up the camels in the morning for the overland to Alice. I’m sure camels were mentioned somewhere …

As is turned out Thursday had the heaviest rain in a year and in the evening I was alerted to the prospect of experiencing the seldom seen Alice phenomenon, the Coming of the River.

Most of the time everything is down there in preparation, well, all except the usual ingredient to be technically classed as a river, ie, the water. Usually the Todd is a dry river bed but just add 100mm of downpour in the hinterland and a good quantity of the inhabitants, plenty of kids running around excitedly, mass downstream for when the river starts to flow.

I heard the news and raced down on the newly kitted out bike, well, cassette, pedals, chain, baggy bike shorts, and, err, bike pump holder, sans pump, to watch the event.

So that’s a dry river bed in the rapidly dimming conditions. Let’s face it, it’s almost pitch black.

Further upstream much jubilation on the banks and the river water slips into view, a rolling wave of froth and brown swirling water.

10 minutes later it’s bank to bank, 4 feet deep, flowing swiftly, an ugly brown series of vortexes, or is that vertices, foam ripping along.

The rain meant work on the site stopped, an unexpected weekday off.

I rolled into town on my now almost new bike, sure felt like it, what a joy, to linger over a flat white in SOMA, sucking down the bandwidth of the adjacent Apple type shop, see Alice ain’t so remote after all, catching up on digital correspondence and watching the world go by.

Ancient memory banks from a previous life back in civilisation in time past startled into life: now I remember.

First day of total leisure in an eon, 2 months, days off, Sundays, are spent washing 2 loads, shopping, vacuuming, drudgery, etc, for the most part and a 40km whirl out to Simpsons Gap.

I’d almost forgotten how the rest of the world lives.

Not so long before this becomes a permanent state.

Almost ready for the countdown to the start of the next sector of this crazy zig zag across Oz.