March, 18th

Spear Creek

We got up as early as usual and once at the airfield there was some maintaining to do. The sparking plugs had to be changed on Gisela's trike and we had to replace the sheets protecting the trike against metalling. Lift-off was at 9:00 AM into the calm air, course 030 to the other side of the Bay. There, in the mountains, was to be a farmhouse where we would definitely see some kangaroes, or so Glenn Sturges had promised...

We were on our way and had great visibility on our 60 kilometres long flight. The runway was ascending slightly. After we found the weather-vane we shot up the hill with slight tailwinds. Not too much of a problem as it turned out. A few minutes later we were convinced that we wanted to spend the night up here. Dean and Lyne are not only farmers but also hosts to visiting tourists. They even have a conference room there with adjacent sleeping quarters. At the time of our visit this facility was occupied by a mining company that held a teamwork- seminar there for their executive managers. They had witnessed our landing and invited us over for dinner.

First Dean took us for a ride around the farm in his 4WD-car and sure enough we saw the first living kangaroes since we came to Australia. That's actually a quite unspectacular sight, but they are cute. The animals hop through the landscape at amazing speed once you approach by car. After this excursion we visited some kangaroes in an enclosure which gave us a chance to study them from close-by. One of the animals was quite tame, so I could actually touch it and it started to nibble on my sleeve. Dean proudly showed us his new well, which now allows him to pump up unlimitted quantities of first-class groundwater. Water is essential in this region, being a main source of life- support and it doesn't just run out the falsett.

A little later on there was a bus arriving with a group of German tourists. They set up their tents in no time, then their 'kitchen-department" started working and soon after it was lunch time. We were then invited to join this group on a tour around the farm in a 4-wheel van. Dean showed us the kangaroes again, then some emus in the distance and very interesting sites where the first settlers here had lived some 150 years ago. And to top it all off, he woke up his two wombats just for Gisela and me. Wombats are animals the size of piglets, they live in caverns and they run like the wind. Plus, they have three very sharp teeth so you have to be careful around them.

Deans responsibilty is to take care of their guests, one of his sons does the kitchen-work and the other son is the farmer. That concept of task-sharing works out well and their idea of diversifying their business secures survival in these difficult times. Australian farmers receive no kind of government support and it is their own responsibility to try and sell their wool and their wheat at the current worldmarket prize. As a comparison: American farmers receive 80 US-Dollars per ton of wheat as subsidy. Dean had lots of stories to tell about the history of the region, the Aborigines, and the way of life up here. We help out in the kitchen doing some dishes and we are so glad to have come here. Finally we feel to have come a bit closer to this country and to have diminished the usual 5.000 feet distance between us and Australia.