the Reverend and Mrs Rowdy
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Daly Waters rush hour

31/5/2018

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Daly Waters is an amazing little caravan park hotel haven about 300km south of Katherine NT, just in off the Stuart Highway. We stayed there a couple of nights a week or so ago (tempus fugit), and played (they have live music every night! Current resident musos staying there until July). We have been playing a bit along the way, in caravan parks for the folks, or at events we invite ourselves along to... more on that in a later post.

Mornings till about 10am see a lot of slow coming and going as last nights guests check out, and the new day's visitors start to drift in. That morning the roar of Harley engines amped up the regular traffic. Dogs cowered as one biker then another growled in, accompanied it seemed by distant music. As the third biker arrived the tune got loud, louder than the bikes, pumping from the last rider's onboard sound system. And the song playing was "The Sounds of Silence". We saw him and his mobile sound system again further up the road at Matarangka (amazing thermal springs)


(thanks to Mij for pix, and also for accompanying on mandolin/harmonica)

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In no particular order - Oodnadatta Track

28/5/2018

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The Oodnadatta Track haiku


Oodnadatta track 
Stone chip on the windscreen
Gibber plain outback


Whirlies on the land
Painted Desert horizon
Here we understand


Mirror Creek foreground
Dusty mirage up ahead
Rattling bumpy sounds
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Sweet dirt road

24/5/2018

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I said I could drive this way forever
Doing eighty something nice and slow
She said so is this your kind of heaven
I said its a sweet dirt road

You glide and drift sometimes when its soft
It may smooth the bumps may slow you down
Or leave you marooned a while

Gently shakes the wheel under  my hand
No rush the land passes still and slow
I could drive this way forever

Smooth and speedy now but maybe later
Rough like it was before, that time i nearly lost it
Driving fast as you can without losing control

​It's a sweet dirt road
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Star shadow emu dreaming

9/5/2018

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Have you ever camped on a gibber plain ten miles from a shanty town
And each hill reveals no beyond and no limit
And time and space is gone
If you ever camped......
Perhaps you know just how I feel tonight

Have you ever seen the dusk stretch out over mesa valley
And lines of scrub streaming out with unseen water
Where drivers dust settles over track and in creek beds like fog
If you never saw ......
Perhaps you know just how I feel tonight

the Milky Way drowns out the sound
Of groaning jets heading west
star shadow emu dreaming the land it walks
Now I've settled under flaming skies
I just can't know how I feel tonight
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Witnessing determination

9/5/2018

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Driving up through Pimba, Woomera, and other historic nuclear waste and test hotspots, we are witnessing evidence of one of the greatest sins of all - the contamination of vast tracts of land with radioactivity that lasts longer than humans can imagine.
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But we have also met people with huge hearts, working with integrity to keep the land clean and protect it for posterity. People in communities like Kimba who have woken up to the insidious and compulsive lying of successive governments, and are standing up for the land, this and future generations. Amongst the constant work of seeding, tailing and deballing sheep, digging out boulders ploughed from ancient land, we were shown the reality of a famous country hospitality. An honour to meet the resister farmers of Kimba.

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Rain being ever on the farmer's mind they asked if we could dance up some rain, so to that end the Rev walked to the top of Mt Ive the following day, a feat bound to attract rain to an unprepared walker, and got caught in a light shower. Returning to the summit later that day with Mrs Rowdy we finished the job and were drenched to the bone with aqueous bounty. Hope that was good enough for y'all!
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We also wintessed the determination of tiny things to survive and flourish - only a couple of days after an earlier rain, already green leaves were sprouting from the hard red track we took to the summit.
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