Brown Snake. My world walk blog Australia 52

Brown snake!

March 18th. Thanks so much to Jim for stopping on the road today. I had just walked 25 km on a hot 32C day when he stopped to offer me a bed  for the night on his farm. He was on his way into Theodore for a takeaway feed of fish and chips. "Turn left at the next driveway and my cousin John should be there to let you in!"

At the farm I was admiring the large home built conservatiry and Johns answer was reassuring. "Yes, not bad it keeps the snakes out!"

Half an hour later Jim returned with the food and John opened his home brew rum. The two lads run their 15,000 acre mixed crop farm. John didn't seem sure how many cows they have "About 12 or 13 hundred. Cows are for the most part easy to keep. We have plenty of grass and water for them and just have to keep spraying them for ticks and other parasites." 

Jim continued: Sometimes we throw a couple of bulls into a field with about a hundred cows. We leave them there for about a month. Just like with humans the term is nine months. I just branded 137 calves."

Many farms and houses survive entirely on rainfall. Several times I have been told that the yearly supply can come in just one or two torrential downpours per year. Houses have large water tanks outside and falling rain is spouted from the roof into the tank. If they need more water, simple they just install more tanks. "We know exactly how much rain falls as we have gauges. It's important to us to know. Me and Jim went to a wedding in Ireland last year and when we asked people how much it rained there they just answered 'too much!' The grass was too green there for me. I was delighted to get back home to lovely normal brown grass!"

There was a day last week when I needed more water. I had stopped at a farm but there was nobody at home. The outside taps only had contaminated grey water. That is waste recycled water for use only in the garden. On I walked to the next farm and it was the same. Four friendly dogs barked at me and once again nobody was at home. However, my luck was in for a window was open and a sink was within easy reach from the outside. I filled my bottles and before I walked back down the track I left a card containing the info about my world walk on the sink unit. Later I regretted doing this as I worried that the residents for all I may know could have had invasion of space issues, or perhaps may have suffered a traumatic burglary in the past. I worried that I may have distressed them. Days later 

I was still worrying about distressing the homeowner and as it turned I met the her a couple of days later as I was coming out of Theodore supermarket. "Not at all, we were delighted you stopped and that we were able to help you even if we weren't there!" She said. 

 I walked on and that day I saw my first live snake of the walk. I have seen many dead ones and others which could have been sleeping but this was the first mobile one. It was a so-called Brown snake as I was told by one man. "We are not imaginitive in Australia about naming our snakes. We got Brown snakes and Red Belly snakes in this region." 

This one was about twenty metres in front of me and in my pathway in front of me. Before  I could take out  my camera it had slittered away into the long grass.