Waggin' Trail: Rollover!

The town will be talking about this for years! The road train carrying Meekatharra's and the mining camps' food supply rolled its rear trailer 6 km out of town. The driver abandoned it and called Ian's mate Brian to do the cleanup, as none of the food could legally be delivered for consumption.

So before you know it, the word was out on the grapevine and locals were racing with utes & trailers to the wreck. Ian & Brian loaded up the big tray truck with TONS of meat, fruit, veg, cold drinks, tinned fruit, salamis, eggs, buckets of feta cheese, tubs of margarine, milk, you name it. Yeeeehah! The main street was a parade of overloaded old farm utes crawling along on semi-collapsing axles, apples and potatoes bouncing on to the road, dogs running out to see if there were any pickings.

We dropped about six month's worth of food off at our place, then took the truck around town this morning to deliver sacks and sacks of vegies to Jo the animal rescue lady for her goats and pigs, threw some over the fence at Kevin & Greg's place, and took the rest to old Kenny at Sherwood Station.

Kenny is your classic "old bushie". His farm at the station is fantastic - almost totally self sufficient. He arrived in Meekatharra in 1947 with "me swag, me rifle and the clothes I stood up in". It was the peak of the gold rush, and things were different in them days. "They 'ad bush dances three times a month, the goddam niggers weren't allowed into town, and if yer didn't git in early at the rifle range yer didn't git yer shootin'."

I talked with him while taking photos of his pigs as he washed & sorted fruit from the trailer. The pigs were beside themselves at all the food. As I was scratching Rosie's back (gruntgruntgruntoooiiinnk), a dark shadow loomed up close. Mabo the ENORMOUS GIANT BOAR wanted a pat too. He is the size of a cow. Mabo and Rosie were the only ones with names, the others being referred to as "dinner" ("gotta git me sausage machine back off Sonja, them little black ones is jest about ready for eatin'").

He had dogs, geese, ducks, chooks as well, all of them looked after affectionately. "If a man don't like animals, gardening & music, yer don't bother with 'im." His kitchen is an outdoor style area with a wood stove, next to a lush vegie garden. We all had a cuppa while Kenny sprayed poison around our feet to stop the billions of tiny biting ants from gnawing the flesh from our ankles. He's rather deaf and we had an unsatisfactory conversation about what I did for work.

A: I live in a bus and play the stock market.
K: Eh?
A: The stock market.
K: Whet's that again? Me hearin's no good.
A: STOCK MARKET.
K: Eh?
A: STOCK! MARKET!
K: Stock market!
A: YES.
K: Hmf.

Having established that I am well below pigs & potatoes in terms of useful farm assets, we waved goodbye and went home to make gallons and gallons of soup. I hope I like carrots a lot because we have 30 kilos of them.