Likely looney,mostly merry.Petunia's adventures: Manning Gorge to Derby

Dear Porky,

We had a splendid time at the Manning Gorge and set out toward Derby with a few stops planned on the way. Increasing numbers of Brahman cows lying dead on the side of the road let us use air conditioning only. After HE distributed the weight in the car differently and released even more pressure of the tyres the rattling became less and THEY could have a reasonable conversation during the drive. The Transporter is not as ideal for these kind of rough roads, but then again THEY are not into mega bush bashing either. We stayed at a rest area called March Fly Glen almost by ourselves, beautifully shaded with white cockatoos nesting above us, quails coming out in the late afternoon, kites patrolling the sky and Willy Wagtails doing precisely what their name promises. Bordering the rest area we found a Billabong with abundance of sea roses and contrary to the name of the rest area : there were not any. Later in the evening a man arrived with his home made trailer, apologising for needing to use a generator in order to do some welding. He had an board all the tools known to man. Since he discovered his wife 18 years his junior in bed with is best friend he sold up and ever since ( we talking several years) he criss crossing Australia. We met an astonishing amount of men in the meantime who do exactly that. From March Fly Glen we went on to Tunnel Gorge but aborted 4 km in the bouncy trip and ended up at a rest area ( no toilets or water) at Napier River. HE dived into the river not realising that salt water crocks were sighted there recently. All went well! We met a Italian/ French couple cruising around Australia and jobbing in between, a German couple taking a couple of years off to travel the world and an Aussie family from Melbourne driving a rental car to really ride the dunes and rocks, because they don't want to ruin there own car. There you go, never buy a car from a rental car company.

This is it for now. Cheers Petunia