D27 TransOceania Sale to Bairnsdale

As we cycled through the fan oven reaching over 30C with a wind on a short hop, a day of reflection.

So far, since Adelaide. Polite drivers, including to pedestrians, allowing people to cross vs pushing in. Good quality of surfaces on “minor roads”. Friendly people. Good coffee though not as good as they think it is. Fire risk, active water management. Car number plates difficult to decipher and can’t tell age of car by rust as they don’t use salt on road. Very few electric cars and charging points, as in negligible (looking it up, 1% for whole of Australia vs 4% for UK). Lots of good quality public toilets. Lots of street water fountains (bring them back to UK), lots of physios and osteopaths. Very little litter, including hardly any plastic water bottles (its not complicated – see water fountains). Inexpensive quality sun tan lotions.

We haven’t thus far seen much Aborigine presence apart from art and some place names. A common way to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land is to say something like, “I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today”. Or statements like “The … acknowledges the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.”

Though not enough respect nor acknowledgement to return the land the traditional owners lost. Feels a little tokenistic to my cynical mind. Coming from the colonial “mother” country which has done so much to disposess people across the world in the name of King and Country and our own views of civilisation (I include Scottish emigres from the clearances physical and economic, still playing out in the USA gun control debate and the 2nd amendment), I suspect my views are not to be shared too widely, nor of value. Plus ca change!

We seem to be in race course country, flat and with watering holes in every field. Poor cows don’t know whether to wallow in the pools or hang out in the shade of trees where they can find them.

Bairnsdale may have Macleod origins from Skye: a Macleod was an early settler and Bernsdale is on Skye. It might mean children. Anyway it’s too hot to go out and melt along the (recent history) heritage trail so we may never know!