Day 18 St George to Surat 115 kms

I'm still struggling to work out why the early riders left even earlier today. Robbo & Danny always leave around 6.30 am, which is fair enough as they can be slower than the rest of them and it will usually take them a bit longer to make it to morning tea. Fliss and Peter took off not long after and they usually do like to stop and take many photos and explore further off the plotted route. But the others are all pretty fast and today was a pretty good day for riding. Apparently there was a little head wind and sometimes to the side but everyone, including the 4 mentioned made extra good time. So much so that they were waiting around for morning tea and there was at least an hour between the first and the last rider. Morning tea was a sticky date cake (supplied by Jacquei) and a microwave cake with melted Easter eggs and walnuts (made by me yesterday).

Lunch was early as well due to the improved wind conditions and we picked a spot on the Yungerman Creek (which was dry but lovely and green). Nice little spot and we had fruit and leftover chicken wings (from last night) plus whatever else the riders had supplied themselves. The biggest butterfly flew past my face and I thought it was a bird; then it flew back into my face, landed on my R) chest area and then settled for a few seconds on my R) shoulder. It was a very special moment (Collis tried to get a photo but he couldn't find the camera in time) and he feels it was my deceased mother visiting us. It may have been.

The Surat Caravan Park has been a pleasant surprise so far with clean amenities, quite a nice camp kitchen and green grass to camp on. Some confusion amongst the natives as there is no-one supervising where everyone goes and they aren't sure if they are in the right spot. I'm glad we got here early and were able to stake our claims. Also saw a herd of about 12 emus today and Jerry came across one that had been hit by a car/truck and still half alive. We saw a few kangaroos last night just before we had the kanga bangas (oops). One kangaroo hopped through the camping ground this morning.

Jerry got asked to move his tent by a group of council workers who had laid claim to an area in the caravan park but this was not obvious to anyone at the time. They came home from work and became quite irate and weren't all that nice about the whole incident. There were three of them and they took up nearly 4 camp site areas with the biggest tents ever.

More sunsets