Bird Killer Strikes Again. (17th June)

We put in the hard yards today on the dirt, covering 560kms and using the fuel in our jerrys. The road was not too bad but there were Brahman cattle everywhere. They're so funny when you encounter them, the process is something like:

• I brake, cow looks up.
• Cow is not sure if moving out of the way is required.
• The closer I get to the cow, the more it starts to look concerned.
• I'm now right near the cow and I stare him/her down.
• There's confusion! Who should yield? Well me of course, I make a shoo-ing motion with my head and the cow gets the message, it runs with all it's counterparts following.

Anyhow this process was repeated many times throughout the day, and it kept me amused.

Just outside of Normanton it started to rain and was getting late, there were 3 brown hawks on the side of the road and I slowed slightly, but then one flew into my path and I cleaned him up. I immediately performed a u-turn and went back to inspect the hawks condition, it looks a little dazed and scared and it's wing is up around it's neck, broken no doubt. I hopped off my bike and just as I was getting closer I heard a crunch and saw Sam carrying the bird off the road. I knew what the sound was it was the sound of Sam's size 10 crushing it's head to put it out of it's misery. What Sam did was the right thing to do as it would have died a slow death on the side of the road, but I just wasn't ready for him to do that. So, for the record I didn't kill the bird, Sam did!!! Jokes aside, he did the right thing.

We set up camp in a caravan park at Normanton and went looking for a feed. We went into the Purple Pub looking for food only to find that they weren't serving that night but the two girls behind the bar made us promise to go back for a beer later.

After dinner I went to the pub, whilst Sam and Scott had their showers, the girls were obviously happy to have some young blood in the place after serving the drunken locals for the last hour or so. I had a bit of a chat and they are Israeli backpackers working their way around Australia and this was their first shift. They're travelling for 6 months and are off to Darwin in a few weeks. After a chat about our bikes, whether we'd take them for a ride, guessing my age at 24(makes me feel so youthful!) and some exploring why they came to Australia, Sam and Scott arrived. At that point they completely left us alone, Scott;s beard must have scared them off!!! Actually I think it was more that the boss was floating around and they wanted to be seen working instead of chatting up such youthful men :-)

One of the local pissed parrots made a cracker of a joke about our bike trip being so fast that it had blown all Sam's hair off!!! Funny stuff!