This morning’s drama started when someone…. (not me) realised that they
hadn’t brought their camera battery charger with them. It was going to be a very long 10 weeks
without it so I donated the services of my camera until we get to Alice Springs
and a new charger can be purchased….
We headed off to our next stop but the weather continued to
deteriorate.
We made a stop at Cadney Homestead thinking it would be a nice break
and potentially an opportunity for an early lunch. We stood at the counter surveying the menu as
an older lady washed dishes at the bar next door. We stood for some time and eventually the
lady looked at us with a look on her face that could only be captioned as “What
the fuck do you want”. She dried her
hands and curtly asked what we wanted.
“2 coffees please” – I asked.
“That will be $8.00 or you can have coffee and cake for $6 each” she droned. “Just coffee will be fine” I responded as we
had 2 fruitcakes I had baked before we left still to be eaten. The woman proceeded to hawk out 2 paper
coffee cups and two lids after taking my money.
She then indicated to a corner of the bar and said “Coffee station’s in
the corner, milk’s in the bar fridge” and promptly went back to her
dishwashing….. So essentially we had
paid $8.00 for two paper cups to serve ourselves! If that wasn’t bad enough, the milk in the
little bar fridge on the table was longlife.
We opted to take our paper cups without coffee – Shane went for the hot
chocolate and I selected a teabag – and took them out to the caravan to add
real milk and have our cake and a bit of a laugh at the experience. 0 points for customer service there Cadney
lady.
The rain continued to fall…… and fall……….. and fall…………………
We were one of only a few arrivals at Marla – our last South Australian
town - which basically consists of a large truck stop, supermarket, caravan
park, motel all rolled into one. The
rain had let up enough for us to get organised for the night and give the dogs
a quick run around on a small patch of grass – one of the few patches of real
grass we’ve seen for a few days. However
it wasn’t long before we were joined by other travellers, most notably by his
near miss of our caravan by mere inches was a carnie heading for the Alice
Springs show complete with his truck and trailer carrying who knows what
goodies destined for the show. The tyre
marks in the wet gravel showed just how close he had pulled in – for a moment I
was sure we were going to lose a bit of the back corner of our van.
A family of birds kept us amused for a little while – coming right up
to the van and had I had something more inviting than breadcrumbs I’m pretty
sure they would have taken them right from my hand. They weren’t so enthusiastic about the dogs
which kept them at bay a little.
It was a little curious though to find all the power towers under
garbage bags. The rain continued
steadily throughout the night.
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