We’re well into our road trip now - for those of you who don’t know, Sandrine and I have taken two weeks off (in addition to a week over Xmas at BogieBush) to ride to Bourke and write a web site for the Aboriginal Health Service for free. There’s no link yet, as it’s not live yet. I’ll post again when it’s all working.
1 day into our holiday at BogieBush, Sandrine decided to drop a beam on her finger, as you do, and was forced to relax instead of work. Anyone who knows Sandrine knows this simply meant struggling with all the work anyway and prolonging the finger-healing process (still ongoing…).
The long and short of it is that I rode back to Melbourne to fetch the car, and we’ve driven up instead. It’s actually a “good thing” as the temperature the day we arrived in Bourke (I’m getting ahead of myself) was over 50 degrees.
So, back to West Wyalong. We drove up to Dubbo from BogieBush, and one of the rest breaks was in a little town called West Wyalong. It scared me. The first thing I saw was a banner across the street (you know those heavy duty plastic ones - like the protesters hold up at rallies) that read “And a saviour was born”. The other side read “Happy birthday Jesus”. I won’t go into the whole “was his birthday really the 25th December” routine, but was taken aback at the banner. It’s unusual to see blatant community support for a single religion, especially in a country as diverse as Australia.
As we walked down the street trying to find somewhere to get a cold drink, my subconscious ignored the shops you see in all towns (banks, bakers, etc) but noticed a little bookshop sown a side street - the Christian Bookshop.
No offense anyone, but I don’t think I’ll be moving to West Wyalong for a long time…