He has been travelling for over one year with his family to promote World Peace and Environment Protection. Some of you will remember that we met in Mongolia last October. Please see photos in a post from a few days ago. It just happened that he was in Australia the same time as me. So what did he do? He left his family in Cairns and travelled 1,500 kms over to my route to walk with me 😀 what can I say, a special friend indeed! Tomorrow he will hitchhike back.
Friday, we walked a steady 26kilometres from Culleraraine Bushmans rest stop camp site to about 35km west of Mildura.
On the way we got stopped by two nice women called Dawn and Shelly. They were on their way to Alice Springs to do great work on a couple of their projects, Alzheimer awareness and they also had some gift packages for Aboriginal families.
Later, as there was poor camping possibility we stopped at a farm and asked for permission to camp. That night we camped inside a huge storage shed. But before we retired for the night the kind owners Chris and Leanne Hunt invited us inside their beautiful house for a delicious pizza dinner. As you can see from the photos their two young boys are being primed to fit into their fathers footsteps, for the have all of the farm toys!
We all laughed when Chris told us that they bought the flour to bake the pizzas, despite all of the wheat they have on the farm. Time is money, I guess.
They were in great form due to the recent rain, it was long overdue.
Chris, born with farming in his blood told us about life on his mainly wheat farm. A huge farm, 4,600 hectares, about 11,500 acres. Along with his brother and father they also grow chic peas, pulses and barley. Much of their produce is actually shipped to China and Korea.
I was also impressed by their wheat-fueled fireplace.
Saturday on the road we were grateful for Leanne's thoughtfulness, for she stopped to give us a chocolate bar each when returning from her grocery shopping trip.
We walked past many rotted out grapevines and olive trees. Nine kms before Mildura, a sizeable city we decided it was prudent to stop for the night. Once again we approached a farm and was greeted by Michael, a semi-retired orange farmer. He is a cheery, happy-go-lucky man and allowed us to camp between the orange trees. He also told us that the reason go the dead grape vines was that the price of water had gone too high and the cost of wine too low. It was no only an issue about insufficient rain as when he turns off his water he still gets massive water bills which can amount to thousands of dollars for drain and other charges.
"Young people don't want to do this work anymore, so that's why there are no grapes on the vines in this region."
Before we went over to cook our dinner over a campfire we were told to help ourselves to as many oranges as we wanted 😀
Speaking about why the olives tasted so bitter we were told that they are soaked in water for ten days and then seasoned.
I have just passed through Mildura and crossed into New South Wales state
😀I looked at the map, and see that I am about three-quarters of the way across this country.
My current position is as per the blue dot
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