Day 6: Watching GWS get spat out by a Tiger

After the hard day yes­ter­day, today was bril­liant! Awoke refreshed, with not a lot of dis­tance to cov­er to fin­ish off Leg 4 — about 40 km to Bor­der­town, SA. I left Kani­va ear­ly and head­ed out for the bor­der between Vic­to­ria and South Aus­tralia at Ser­vice­ton. I was soooo hap­py to final­ly reach the bor­der. Although I’ve already cov­ered half the dis­tance of my jour­ney, in my mind the bor­der has always been the ‘halfway’ milestone.

The bor­der rest-stop was good — a nine­­teenth-cen­­tu­ry dis­pute over 3km of the bor­der between Vic­to­ria and South Aus­tralia, which made it all the way to the High Court and then the Privy Coun­cil, made for an inter­est­ing read, and might explain some of the ear­ly ani­mos­i­ty and rival­ry between the two colonies. I stayed at the rest stop to brew a cof­fee (what bet­ter way to mark leav­ing Vic­to­ria) and for­got to put my watch back, so was 30 min­utes out for the rest of the day until I realised.

Stop­ping at the quar­an­tine bins for fruit at the bor­der, I met a Ger­man cou­ple in a rent­ed camper­van on their way to Ade­laide, then Ulu­ru. From what they told me I’m fair­ly cer­tain they’re going to climb it, but I did­n’t push back on the issue. I did, how­ev­er, warn them to take croc­o­dile warn­ings seri­ous­ly, as our sal­ties seem to love the taste of Ger­man backpacker.

I arrived in Bor­der­town just before mid­day (although I thought it was after 12, of course, because of my watch on Vic­to­ri­an time) and decid­ed to pull into the pub for a beer and some lunch, and to watch the AFL Grand Final between the Rich­mond Tigers and the Greater West­ern Syd­ney Giants. The plan was to find a camp­site and get my laun­dry done after the game. Today was meant to be a total rest day, if I had’ve made it all the way yesterday.

Sit­ting at the bar hav­ing a few froth­ies in my school dress, I pro­vid­ed plen­ty of amuse­ment and laughs to the Bor­der­town locals there to watch the game and cash in on an arrange­ment where­by those in the pub­’s footy tip­ping com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the sea­son received free drinks — beer, wine, spir­its, every­thing — for the dura­tion of the game. So you can imag­ine, there were some great local char­ac­ters in there to get “their mon­ey’s worth”. I final­ly realised my watch was late when the game start­ed half an hour ear­ly (by the pub clock)!

Whilst drink­ing, eat­ing a nice chick­en par­ma, and thor­ough­ly enjoy­ing the on-field, arse-fuck­­ing defeat being doled out to Toby Greene and his mates from the Greater West­ern Shit­fight, the pub­li­can Cather­ine Wheel­er offered me a free room for the night! Bonus!! It was a won­der­ful devel­op­ment, as I was hav­ing a lot of fun and meant I could keep drink­ing. Hehehe…

The only catch to the free room is that I can’t get access to my bicy­cle until 0930 tomor­row morn­ing, and will there­fore have to real­ly get going once the bike is out of the shed, to allow for my inevitable hang­over. That’s OK though, I’ll sleep in and get my laun­dry etc. done before I leave.