Page 241 - Mit dem Wohnwagen durch Australien

flooding. The Local Radio would like to hand out blood high pressure medication to the organising committee of the
festivities because of the continual uncertainties. Will the highway from the south remain open? It is already closed
towards the north since a couple of weeks. Large chunks of the road have been torn open and it is flooded with a
fast moving torrent. Only when the water has gone, will they be able to repair the damage, in one or two months or
so.

We keep listening to the local radio Opal FM. Super Music, professional jingles and a volunteer at the mike. He
sometimes misses the switches or inadvertently blends out the eagerly awaited weather situation or news bulletin,
which he receives from national radio. He consoles us with the upcoming 5 o’clock bulletin. Well, he just managed
to broadcast the tail end of the weather forecast. He gives a short version: “Well yeah rain which was äähm not
forecasted, a....nd we haven’t reached maximal temperature of 29C today... ähm either, tomorrow it will be no
different.” Then he progresses to the road situation which everybody is awaiting anxiously.

“Well, road x is ähm......closed....., yes we all know that already. The Y road .... what is that now?..... I do not
understand this.... I am sure there is nothing.... I think it is....ähm open. Ähm I think it is best...ähm that you cal the
ähm, the öhm... councils you know? Council Offices. Do I have a Telephone numer? ...... Nooo ... ähm it is in the
book..... Yes they can give you much better information than I can.”
One has to know, that the offices close at 5 pm, so no road conditions tonight.
He says goodbye at 6 pm with: “ähm Have a good ähm evening and yea..... I know....ähm not exactly how it
continues..... Well, there will be something... I better play some music now.”
Warrumbungles

The Warrumbungles are a long extinct group of Volcanoes. Today, they host a centre of Australian Astronomy. You
see larger and smaller telescopes everywhere, even in little front gardens. We were lucky and caught the last
guided tour through its facility for the year. The view from the “mountain” is breathtaking. We enjoy the starry skies
without any light pollution. Through very strong telescopes we can see stars, which look single, but really are made
up of three or more stars. We admire our favourite constellation: the Southern Cross.
Yowie, the spirit of death, and the Southern Cross.

Biami was the greatest of all spirits. His magic was very strong and he came to the earth. He made two men and one
woman out of the red clay of the Barwon river bank. He showed them which plants they should eat in order to keep
fit. After a prolonged draught, these plants became very rare. One of the men killed a Kangaroo and he and the
woman ate the flesh. The other man did not want to eat meat. He left them and wandered to land of the black earth.
The man and the woman closely followed him. There, weak from hunger, the man died under a large white gum
tree. The man and the woman saw a huge spirit figure raise him up and drop him into the tree crown. The tree was
lifted from the earth and passed into the sky, where the sky spirits lived.

As night fell, the two companions could no longer see the tree, but four gleaming eyes. Two of he eyes were those
of the first man to die and the two others belonged to the Yowie, the spirit of death.

Two white cockatoos that lived in the tree were so spooked, that they also flew into the sky. They became the two
pointer stars of the Southern Cross.

BACK FROM THE OUTBACK
We know, that we are out of the Outback because: there are large trees, we can get more TV Stations, we can use
our mobile phone even in between towns, our car has no large red clumps under the fender any more, there are
again McDonalds and other billboards and, most important of all:

There are no more swarms of Flies, Locust and only one or the other mozzie towards evening. We have now lived
through 7 of the 10 biblical plagues. First the bushfires, then the torrential rains, the hails and floods, followed by the
Mozzies, the locust and the frogs. Some of the mosquitoes are carriers of the Ross River or Dengue fever. The
locusts have eaten up whole huge fields of new crops. The Murray has not turned red, but was closed for bathers for
a while due to Blue Algae Pest. Australia’s nature is widely untamed, archaic and unforgiving. Every day we learn
better to live with it.