DAY 73 - CEDUNA SA

CEDUNA SA

DAY 73


My mind is basically made.

It probably has been for a while, so here it is.

I will be heading back east from Ceduna along the Eyre Highway towards Port Augusta and will look forward to a reunion with the Flinders Ranges in around a week.

I believe that my current level of self-sufficiency on this bike is simply not enough to seriously contemplate taking on the Nullabor.

This is not an excuse by any means and even with the smell of it cooking in the next kitchen since landing in Ceduna, it is just not the best option at this time.

There are other worthy reasons I could nominate, but there is really no point in this space.

I will be back on the road tomorrow morning and expect to be in Port Augusta by next weekend.

The timing has metered itself well over this weekend – crap weather and a public holiday has determined my decision to hang about and I am better for the experience.

Despite the warnings, I have not found Ceduna to be the isolated and inhospitable outpost many would have had me believe.

I can see how it can easily be taken as such, but I have not approached this 3-day tenure with a pejorative outlook.

To the contrary, I have made a dedicated effort to meet the locals halfway and I believe the effort has been rewarded.

Staying where I have has helped infinitely, but to make such close connections with a Koori community is not an everyday experience by any stretches.

There are going to be inherent problems in these communities for many a time to come, but it need not be as bad as all that.

I generally find the white man’s attitude to the whole thing as 99% fear based and formed on a worse-case stereotype and is not necessarily like this at all.

In any given scenario, it is only going to help to sense trouble before it happens, so don’t go there.

But to fear another because of their skin colour, ethnicity, socio-economic status or because they are vagrant scabs on a street corner is the height of human ignorance in my opinion.

It does not immediately classify them as murderers, thieves, rapists, serial killers or anything else.

An individual may be any one of these at any time.

Someone making a nuisance on a street corner is more an example of a pathetic life story than anything else – more a harm to themselves than anyone else.

Not exactly an edifying sight in a tidy little seaside town, but that’s life I guess.

I could go on but I believe the point to be well made.

Next stop - the town of Wirulla, some 90 kilometres east and a healthy day’s ride tomorrow.