Heat Wave

From Hopetoun, I started working my way back south, anticipating a change in winds.  First stop was the small town of Rainbow.  There were tennis courts next to my campsites, with a shady shelter. After school, a couple young boys showed up to actually play tennis, the first I've seen this trip.

Community Tennis Balls?

Tennis Players!

It was (again) too windy to cook, so I went to one of the two "Hotels" (pubs) for dinner.  I was the only customer that Wednesday evening, so the lady publican told me her whole story.  A divorcee, she recently bought the hotel, hoping to make money running it.  It doesn't look good.  I did get a large serving of the lasagna special.

That evening, birds arrived again:

They were equally loud the next morning.

The weather turned warmer the next day, when I rode on the the even smaller town of Jeparit.  It's so small, I couldn't find an internet connection.  No bakery, either.  Some people did show up to play tennis.  My neighbor in the caravan park was a retired local farmer, who was friendly enough, but turned out to be a flaming racist.

Yesterday, the heat arrived in earnest, 38 C (98 F), though I did have a tailwind for part of the 84 km ride to Horsham.  I stopped for water at a farm about halfway, and was invited to stay for lunch.  Geoff and Christine have been farming there for 35 years.  Their daughter, Lorraine, and her husband Andrew were visiting from south of Hamilton, where they raise horses. There were lots of friendly dogs.  Before I knew it, they were feeding me steak, sausages, eggs, and ice cream.  I learned a bit about Australian farming.  Here the growing season is in the winter, when it rains.  After the harvest, or when they leave a field fallow to accumulate moisture, they spray it to keep the weeds from taking moisture from the soil.  They don't plow it immediately, so the dead roots help hold the soil.  In any case, many thanks to Geoff and Christine for a great lunch and visit.  I did get some water, too.

Now I'm taking a break in Horsham, a town of perhaps 10,000.  Last night was very warm, but a cool shower before bedtime made it tolerable.  Sometime in the middle of the night an amazing thing happened:  Rain!  I had to get out and put on the rain fly.  That's the first rain I've seen this trip.  It wasn't much, but the clouds promise more today.  It took a while to find my rain gear this morning.

Small towns in Australia, as in the US, are struggling.  Most have a lot of abandoned businesses in the main street.  However, there always are some nice parks, a swimming pool, sports grounds, and well-kept public toilets.  There usually is a grocery, post office, pharmacy, bakery/cafe, a pub, and a small hospital/clinic.  Conspicuously absent from the businesses are customers.   How they survive at all is a mystery.  I suspect some kind of subsidies.  Pubs are hard hit by the recent crackdown on drink driving, but there has to be a better way to keep them in business than letting drunk drivers kill people on the roads.

From here, I'll keep working my way south for a while.  Warm weather is supposed to continue, though with more south winds.