Day 382 | Musgrave roadhouse: first rest day for 10 or 12
rest day
For a while I was the only tent in the paddock, by the time I came back from tapping out my blogs next door at the “cafe” there were the same number of Patrols, Navarras, etc, ie, mostly the big 4WDs, packed in, I swear they were more or less the same bearded faces, the same inevitable questions, it’s déjà vu all over again.
The chain smoking woman who spent her time slouched in a camp chair was gone, replaced by a woman who is as wide as the previous one was thin but it might have been the same chair, the same body collapse.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And yet …
Today I realised how much the world has moved on while I have stepped out.
I was chatting to one bearded bloke this morning about the difference between the Brolga, small patch of red on the head, black legs, and the Sarus Crane, 1.5 m tall, ie, a bit bigger, red down the throat, reddish legs. We investigate via his identification book that I really should have carried on my travels right from the start.
Then he sheepishly whips out his smart phone and shows me his bird app, basically the same as the book but with additional information, like distribution maps and the configuration of the bird’s nest. Then he taps somewhere, do I want to hear the bird call while in flight, or when mooching around on the ground?
He clicks away and suddenly I hear that familiar stampede of elephants and we switch back and forth between the species.
Then he can’t turn it off, looks slightly embarrassed.
Identification is now an easy system: spot the bird, guess the species, check the distribution map, confirm the bird call.
Voila.
I mentioned something that I heard on the radio yesterday, there’s an app where you play a few bars of any tune for your phone to listen to, it thinks a moment, then tells you what the song is.
That’s the modern world.
It’ll take some adjustment.