Having their Say in Hay!

A long chapter called "Having their Say in Hay!"
 Stick on the kettle, or insomniac material time 😅
Hay is a small town in the western Riverina region of New South Wales. It is the agricultural district on the wide Hay Plains.
The town itself is built beside the Murrumbidgee River and has a population of about 3,000.
Agriculture and the services sector are the main industries.
On the road I have noticed a lot of blown away cotton, waste from the most recent harvest of about three months ago. These small fragments are tangled in among weeds and thorns. In recent years, rice and cotton have been important industries in Hay. However, colder growing seasons have hindered the development somewhat.
 One retired sheep sheerer said to me that in his prime that he could sheer a sheep in three minutes. However, he was not good enough to get into the towns Sheep Sheering Hall of Fame.

"Those boys could sheer one every thirty seconds. It gets to a stage when you literally sheer off your profits. Because when you sheet that many in a day you go into a higher tax bracket; so you soon learn to play the system."

"Like looking for a needle in a Hay stock!" I joked.

He was not the first person to say this to me as a couple of months ago a well-heeled grey nomad ( Americans call them snow birds. They are retirees who travel the country in the winter months in their RVs) mentioned that the Australian government monitors the bank accounts of its citizens for irregular transactions. And sometimes people get a message asking what such and such a transaction was. This man went on to say. "Look at my rig and the SUV that I have pulling it. It's all worth 200,000 dollars and I don't need to have that amount of comfort. But the bottom line is that I have heaps of money and if I don't spend it out government will look into my pensions and other benefits and cut me off. So, it's a case of, spend it or lose it."
Many other people have confirmed this to me. They talk about 'Big Brother' and global mass surveillance.
Returning to the story of Hay and due to its relative remoteness, the Australian government chose  it  as a suitable location for some Internment and POW Camps. There they housed over 2,000 German and Austrians, mainly Jewish refugees who were effectively imprisoned during the Second World War. Many were shipped from England in advance of a feared German invasion. When they were eventually released many of these people people stayed on and made significant contributions to Australia, especially in the area of science.

I took a rest day in the Big 4 camp ground where the proprietors gave me two nights for twenty dollars, which is the normal nightly cost. Most nights I camp free.

Two nights ago I camped thirty kms before Hay. Just half an hour before my finish there was an almighty rain and wind storm. It came without warning, except for a few drops, which is normal and sometimes blows away. This was different and it lasted only a couple of minutes but in a few seconds before I could get my rain gear on I was saturated as I struggled to hold Karma, my cart from blowing away. Eventually, I made it to a picnic site where a nice man called Alf was camping in his 1989 Econovan motor home.

He was travelling alone and he is certainly different from the man I mentioned earlier. Alf boiled up a thermos of hot water for me and  I drank copious amounts of peppermint tea. We chatted away under a sheltered roof out in the middle of the Hay prairie. I repaired a couple of punctured inner tubes, for the thorns are tormenting me. Alf is a simple man, about seventy and spoke through his teeth in a heavy Aussie accent. I had to guess half of what he was saying from the half I understood.

"Well I never married, and no regrets for I like to lead a simple and peaceful life (lol) Now I travel in this here camper van. I get about 300kms for about 50 litres (190 miles for 12 gallons approx)

" So I can't spend all that money every day, so I just go short segments. Tomorrow I will go to Hay, 30 kms away."
I asked him what he does when he arrives at a place. He doesn't read, just goes for a short walk and does his shopping. So Alf set off next morning and before I had even finished my cereal and second cup of coffee he had probably arrived.

The previous night I had the Ravensworth picnic site in my sights. I had just walked 26kms and a ranch hand called Scott
stopped me to give a big bag of oranges, water and twenty dollars for my next meal.

"The girlfriend, said she saw you on the road and told me to go out and to help you. I will see if my boss will allow you to camp on his farm, but he probably won't, as he is a bit of a deck-head!"

So Scott went off to ask and said the answer was no. However, I had the precaution of asking Scott to fill up my two-litre thermos as it would save a lot of cooking that night. By the way thanks to Lester Frost who not only sponsored that new cooker but also my new walking pants and shirt.

Back to today at the Hay campsite I got talking to an eighty year old woman in the camp kitchen.

"My husband has just downgraded our Rv to a pop up trailer tent! I am annoyed because he wouldn't let me drive his old much bigger motor home! You know he is a worrier and I'm not. Do you know I have a grandson who is a teacher in England. Well he is on his way to drive from Europe to Mongolia in a banger of a car. He is in the Mongol Rally, a 10,000 mile drive to Mongolia and through Siberia and the Gobi desert to raise money for depression charity. Do I worry about him? No!
" I also have a granddaughter who has a husband who is no good for her and do I worry about her? No I don't."
So I asked this lady why was he no good for her granddaughter and she said because be is gay. And her daughter poses nude for nude posters! So I asked her for her granddaughters mobile number for a laugh, lol!

"The only one I worry about is the one that lives in America! She has a normal job, but America is a mad place!" Continued the lady with a laugh.

Earlier I spent an hour repairing a puncture and cutting out an old inner tube to wrap around it; that way I will effectively have a second protective layer from the thorns. I also bought a puncture mending slime to insert through the tubes valve. Hopefully, this works! I have had three bad thorn spells in all of my travels: Nebraska in the USA, England and now New South Wales.