Day 7: A hangover to Coonalpyn

I woke up this morn­ing with a bit of a hang­over, but noth­ing too bad, and got my laun­dry done pret­ty ear­ly. I wan­dered around town for a while, check­ing out the Bor­der­town train sta­tion, a stop for the Over­land Train I’ll be tak­ing back to Mel­bourne this com­ing Fri­day, and was sad­dened at how run-down and in need of main­te­nance the neglect­ed but beau­ti­ful her­itage sta­tion was.

I popped by the IGA (called Food­land in SA) for some bananas and Pow­er­ade, then vis­it­ed the house Bob Hawke was born in, which was just down the road from the Bor­der­town Hotel. With all that done, it was still only 0830, hehe­he, Bor­der­town is a nice lit­tle town and I real­ly liked it, but it’s not over­ly big.

0930 came and I got my bike out of the locked shed, said good­bye to the hotel, then hit the road. My wor­ry about the time quick­ly dis­ap­peared as the ter­rain was fair­ly flat, and I made good time at about 21 kph aver­age. The coun­try­side here is beau­ti­ful, slight­ly bar­ren and sparse but I like that kind of coun­try, and I enjoyed the ride immense­ly. I stopped at Kei­th for some lunch, and Ki Ki for a rest stop.

Oth­er­wise I pret­ty unevent­ful­ly made it to Coon­alpyn by about 1630, where I took some pho­tos of the paint­ed silo mur­al, now a rel­a­­tive­­ly-famous local land­mark and tourist attrac­tion. I was bet­ting all the way here today that there’d be a café or road­house near the silo called the Coon­alpyn Silo Café, and I was­n’t disappointed!

I was dis­ap­point­ed, how­ev­er, at receiv­ing my first real­ly neg­a­tive response to my school-dress-clad jour­ney: I’d parked my bike in front of the silo, tak­en some pho­tos, then sat down for a quick breather just as an elder­ly cou­ple pulled up in between my bike and I, to take a pho­to them­selves. I asked the male dri­ver if he want­ed me to move my bike so they could get a clean shot, to which he replied, “No, no, no! Fuck off you bloody f****t! What the fuck are you?!”. I just said “No thanks will do” and his wife admon­ished his rude­ness and vul­gar­i­ty, but it still left a bad taste as it’s the first neg­a­tive response in near­ly a week. I guar­an­tee this bas­tard vot­ed ‘no’ in the same-sex mar­riage plebiscite. Anyway…

Crossed the road to the Coon­alpyn Hotel, where the love­ly pro­pri­etors gave me a free room and I had a nice wood-fired piz­za and a beer. Some great locals donat­ed about $40 to the char­i­ty as well, which helped restore the faith a little.