have fun by cycling. Unfortunately, the warmth changes in completely short time into heat. Hot air confronts me. In spite of my good and thin clothes it becomes more and more disagreeable. I drink like a hole. The street is wavy, but in a very good state. Only very few cars drive. Most road users exist of gigantic road trains. However, these do all one big curve around me. And then it is to me as if sweltering heat confronts me. My speedometer gives up his mind in this heat. I need soon a new one.
Thus I took a rest in shorter and shorter distances beside the highway and go under a short mally tree in its small shade.
And when I am so about 20 km before Wirrula, I go with my bicycle oncemore in the shade of a tree. The hot wild storm pushes down my bicycle together with its heavy panniers. I have trouble to solve all and to lay it besides. Beseechingly I look at the past driving car drivers. But all wave only and drive on.
And when from my direction a car appears far behind in the curve, I hold unbelievingly up my thumb. And really the car stops and comes backward on my roadway direction Wirrula back to me. The man asks me whether I have fallen. From loud desperation, he can go on if I say the truth to him, I confirm it. Together we load the panniers and the bicycle behind on his car. I may take a seat in front beside him and receive an ice-cold coke. What a marvellous drink for an almost died of thirst! Finally, I also cool inside and around my stomach.
In his car is a satellite phone which he lays very much to me in my heart to purchase one here also, who knows who knows? Also a burglar alarm is to the left behind me on top beside the door, if he should come with his car in the outback to difficulties. He has made provision for everything.
Because he himself is on the move as a businessman to Port Augusta to begin tomorrow his work with businessmen and workers in the outback, he asks me whether he can take me up to there; because along the distance from here up to there I can not go by bicycle on account of the high heat. I accept.
Before Port Augusta he stops at a roadhouse and invites me to a cold drink and a sandwich after my taste. Then my brain also functions better again. And when he finds out after my itinerary my route from Port Augusta and I tell him that I like to cycle from Wilmington to Renmark in the Murray Riverland, he resolves immediately to bring me shortly on a caravan park before Wilmington.
Thus we go from Port Augusta and see on a railroad route a 3 km long freight train. At the beginning and end are four railroad engines to pull it forward. Herewith diminished coal is brought to the burning at Port Augusta. As so I understood it.
During the journey my male angel explains me the sheep farming and the scenery by trough we are just going. About this I know nothing. He himself owns 5,000 sheep after which he does not need to look. His sheep become clipped all two months. The short wool is used to the climate insulation in house constructions and roof structures. After six months the lambs become separated from the mothers. The sheep eat the dry grass, however, in the morning and in the evening they have water to drink.
Here grow the small salty bushes, Saltbush called, which they eat with pleasure. The sheep are bred as meat suppliers. These sheep which eat the salty bushes and Bluebush deliver an especially well tasting meat. If black lambs are born, they are not to be used. Black wool is not welcome. It concerns with most merino sheep. This wool must be always white.
It is difficult to receive the sheep always healthy. A big illness place is under the tail. Here they are especially treated. If it becomes too hot to the sheep and enough bushes are available, they creep under it, anyway the lambs. If it is very hot over the day and at night frost rules, unfortunately lambs die. There are up to 5,000 sheep of one single owner. For so many animals nobody can build a solar protection.
We drive into the Flinders Range, a regional very nice, mountainous area. He briefly stops in Quorn and shows me how I can come along tomorrow without having to cycle over high mountains out of this further after 48 km to Wilmington.
Then he turns back again and drives to the caravan park in Quorn where he also knows all people and these him. Quorn is a wonderful small place with two churches, hotels, a railway station and many houses from the early days. I am inspired and think to insert tomorrow one inspection day. Australia is a sheep country. Here every Sunday it is usual to roast sheep meat as festival food which is dished up with potatoes and vegetables.
In the Flinders Range it is mountainous with hilly country of grass and bushes. Here the sheep graze. Also kangaroos come and drink from the drinks for the sheep. I can see them. These are whole dark animals which live on top on the high mountains besides here. Because it is much colder there at night, they also have a thicker and longer coat of hair. Their ears are round, not sharp like those of the red and gray kangaroos.
This businessman, my male angel, owns a factory, in which the stone blocks from the mountains become broken in big or small little stones and pass away for the road construction. He tells me quite proudly that he has done $ 600 clear profits with the last horse running. He has put number 3 on the horse and has won.
From the registration of the local caravan park he brings me with all my belongings to a dreadful dry and sandy place where I should put up my tent. He still writes down for me his address with telephone number, if problems appear. Then I should call him. He will help me. Then I say thank you. And he goes to his hotel.
While I build up my tent, Gallahs, the pink-coloured cockatoos, float very much for a long time around the high and ancient trees which my rescuer calls "sugar-gum-trees". The normal, half-high trees have everywhere many sheets at the end of their branches. These are mallee-trees. They donate some shades.
Today now it has already been getting late. I sit in the space for mothers with kids. Here in it, unfortunately, it is also very hot. However, I do not dare to open the door because, otherwise, vermins come in.
Because my speedometer gave up his mind after 34.5 km, however, I saw at a sign how wide it was still to Wirrula. I drove 66 km.
16.01.2013: Rest day in Quorn: 0 km
At night it cools something. About myself in the air I hear the countless Gallahs shouting and flying.
During my today's rest day I allow to concern it quietly. Thus I walk in this small, old and pretty place. At the supermarket I make purchases. A young policeman stands beside me at the counter. I ask him in which area of Australia it feels chilly at the moment. There he smiles and says that it is hot everywhere. – Thus I have to cycle on!
At the railway station I talk to a woman who had emigrated here 23 years ago with her husband from England, after he had come to pension. They feel here very well and do not have the problems like the German emigrants: other money, other language, other weights and other traffic direction.
While I speak with the second woman who stands behind the bar, she shows me the advertisement for the "Pichi Richi train“, an old-timer railroad which drives here many tourists trough the Flinders Range in autumn. I knew from my yesterday's angel that this railroad journey is also a center of attraction because on half of the journey food is distributed.
And when she hears that I write about my bicycle tour a book she orders herself quite immediately a copy. She tells me how she does it if she must work in this scorching heat in her garden: to bind a humid, thin fleece towel before mouth and nose and one in the neck. Then I should drink as much that I must go lastingly to the toilet. But I can not drink as much during the bicycle riding. Then I can not bend me no more deeply enough over my bicycle by riding by racing handlebar.
To my relative, Hans in Melbourne, I write by email: „Hans, I stay at the moment in Quorn. And because I do not want to cycle on account of the scorching
