26 Nov - Yalata

Hi there. We have crossed the rabbit proof fence in Yalata. For those of you who don’t know, a group of us, and mainly one man, Damian, crossed the country on pushbike in the name of charity (raceacrossaustralia.com). The grate in photo, which is the road part of the nation long rabbit/ vermin proof fence, has special significance to myself (rob) and damian. I thought I would take the opportunity to measure the length of this because on a 40degree day, when all was not well, we decided that it would be too difficult to ride slowly over this so with 100m metres to go before it we sped up to 40-45km/h and bunny hopped it, in true mountain biker fashion. So here it is damian, all 4.5 metres of it, with gaps big enough to lose your leg in. for everyone else, you probably wont get this, but that’s ok, you can read the rest of the blog.
After all the fun of the grate, we drove on in to Yalata. It was really quite awkward for us, as we normally have a purpose to be here. And with our contacts, Jonny and Trish on holiday, this was all the more awkward. We ended up going into the shop and getting lunch, sitting around, when finally, we saw someone we knew. Ivan, Richard and Ernie were all happy to have a chat, Richard mainly wanted to tell us how excited he was about the postie coming tomorrow (in house humour again, sorry), Ivan was telling us about the 36 pallet loads of instant turf he laid on the sand/rock oval, that should be fun to maintian!! And Ernie was happy to say very little. I think he was a bit shy with none of his peers around him.
Once school had finished we met up with some of the children that we know through the holiday programs that the Wantirna mob have run in recent times, we played catch-catch (tiggy), and the boys got me (rob) to throw them into backflips for about 10 minutes. These kids have got some energy!
Enough catch-catch for Emily and I. We left, back to the roadhouse campsite for dinner and an early night. Little sleep and about 20 road trains later it is breakfast and now we are off again, off to see the coast of the ‘Great Australian Bight’.
It should be noted that although allegedly quite good, Telstra reception is really quite poor, until about perth, from memory, but we’ll try to keep things updated. If you don’t see any changes, we are probably not dead, just out of reception. Over and out.