Day 552 | Wentworth Ski Reserve: back at the river
82 km | zzOz total: 17,790 km
Who says Australia isn’t flat, boring and monotonous, today there was a singular rise on my dirt road, getting up and over a misplaced sand dune, the sand too deep to ride down the other side. Otherwise it was as flat as the Hay Plain.
I had lunch at a bend in the Murray in the shade of oversized River Red Gums, survivors in their battle with nature despite limbs torn asunder, few remaining leaves, basically in bad shape but somehow hanging in.
I cruised into civilisation, ie, Wentworth, after 3 and reorientated myself, wandering around this historic little town at the junction of the country’s two longest rivers, the Darling and the Murray, with its old buildings, and, like most country towns, old inhabitants. The river junction isn’t as exciting as you might imagine, the milky green of the Darling swirling into the browner Murray flow, but there’s a tower to climb to give a better perspective with three storey elevation.
I find an obvious campsite down by the river and stumble across a fellow traveller, this time without any means of transportation save his legs, he cheerily describes himself as Australia’s fifth most well known swaggie, well, he has a neat almost new swag, similarly clean if rumpled clothes, and a small grey bag that houses everything that he needs for a good life.
My standard issue “what’s your story, mate”, gives Neil permission to launch into the most intricate, lurid, preposterous tales of anyone I’ve met in these travels, a peculiar one way conversation where for an hour or so he fails to actually breathe, must do it through his skin, starting sensibly enough with a short précis of his life, one dead son, two, or is it three daughters, he’s inconsistent here, a murdered wife although that may just be wishful thinking, life in the army, Africa and the Middle East, now the SAS, all somewhat plausible but it deteriorates into a rambling, incoherent, jumbled series of stories that jump from one to another without reason, an astonishing range and number of named characters, all good mates, with large quantities of money in various bank accounts, $5m here, $10m there, a stagecoach he found in a cave somewhere full of gold bullion, etc.
It’s a remarkable flow, like he’s surfing a gigantic never ending wave, episode merges with episode, I stand there gobsmacked by Neil’s wild imagination in full flight.
Oh, he was just warming up, he now puts himself at the scene of every major crime from the last 30 years and he has solved them all except the police have never believed him.
Well, no one would, I come to the conclusion he is recounting the plot to each of the violent movies made in recent years in Australia, grinning happily, and I haven’t seen any of them having avoided films of that type since before Pulp Fiction. He’s been shot at, for a laugh, by Australia’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat, but got away because he’s a swaggie not a backpacker, he was at Wolf Creek for those murders, except having been there myself I know it’s just the name of the movie and doesn’t have any connection with the serial murders of backpackers that occurred elsewhere, at Ayres Rock for a dingo encounter, and in South Australia for the Snowtown murders, and some other gruesome Adelaide series of bodies buried under buildings and driveways.
For some reason I feel completely at ease with him despite the subject matter and I’m standing on an otherwise deserted 4WD track near a lonely river with the sun quickly going down magnificently in the background.
I’ve encouraged him, listening intently even if my eyes have been somewhat glazed, attempting to follow the tales but in the end even he became confused, and, with the break I slip away to plonk down the tent elsewhere, although feeling there might not be sufficient distance from my new best friend.
No swarms of small black ants here, instead just a large tree climbing goanna and an occasional massive bull ant, some must be 30 mm long.
I don’t think I’m sounding like Neil, yet, but I’m not taking any risks.
A few more weeks and this mission will be done.