Feathered friend from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.
Feathered friend. Keen to share my sandwich. Absolutely no idea what it is. Either my lunch or the local fauna. Bird obviously. That much even I’d grasped.
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Feathered friend
May 8th, 2011Darwin Awards
May 7th, 2011Next morning. Dawn. Solitary kangaroo in the distance. No irksome council official. Just a man in a pick-up emptying the bins. There’d been a forced entry in the gents toilets. I must have looked shocked. Money boxes for the showers he quickly explained. Broken into. I smiled. Relieved. He suspected the group of young people staying at the site might be able to shed some light on the matter. Locals. Unemployed. One with previous form with the Police.
I said I wasn’t so sure. They’d been very friendly towards me. Testosterone kept in check by the young women in the group. Camping out to enjoy a little freedom. Released a little from the strictures of village life. Hardly rebellious, willing to clash with authority. Quite the opposite. It was they who’d sought to avoid confrontation. Warning me of the council official. Whatever their past antics, they seemed to have moved on. Matured. One couple proudly expecting a baby.
And of the break-in? Last year it’d been a French backpacker. Daft enough to boast of his exploits in the visitors book. In French admittedly. Arrested later in Cairns. But still a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
Show me where it says…
May 7th, 2011Show me where it says from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.
Fellow campers had explained tents could only be pitched in the open. On the dirt of the car park. Not under the covered structure I’d elected to use. Risking a sizeable fine. The council warden visiting early in the morning. But I’d absolutely no intention of moving. Confident I wasn’t breaking any bye-law. Or even going against the spirit of such things.
Signs said no camping on the grass. Fairly prominent. I’d pitch on concrete. A smaller, faded laminated sign claimed to prohibit use of the recreation club building. But not the structure I’d chosen. Assuming the Chief Executive of the local council had actually signed an order to such effect. Which I doubted. And, in any case, if the intention was to prevent damage to the facilities, to hinder the enjoyment of others, I was doing neither.
Suppose that’s one of the downsides of very rule based societies. Hindered by their very rigidity. Encouraging the exploitation of loopholes rather than the adherence to the spirit of things. Common sense.
St Lawrence wetlands
May 7th, 2011St Lawrence wetlands from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.
Ken describes his stop at a free campsite besides the St Lawrence wetlands, north Queensland.
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