Around Augusta

It’s funny how when you’re travelling around, places that were formerly just dots on the map, points of punctuation on highways, become real and take on meaning once you arrive. Yesterday, Augusta was just a small town on the edge of Australia where as usual, I knew nobody, but today I have unwittingly become part of it, albeit only on a very temporary basis, and it has become familiar to me.

As I was riding out to the lighthouse last evening, I spotted a sign to the Nurses Memorial and went to check it out this morning. It's quite a tale, about Australian Army nurses in WW2, most of whom survived a ship sinking, were then imprisoned by the Japanese in Indonesia, many were shot, some drowned, others died of disease, but the rest returned home after being ‘lost’ in Indonesia for over three years. I’m not sure why the memorial is in Augusta, but it is.

The pioneer cemetery is just across the road too. The original settlement started in 1830 failed after a few years, and was restarted several years later. There are several plaques with the names of people who started the town, and many of the street names of the modern town are named after them.

I love small towns; it’s easy to work out how they came about, the fortunes of various names, and follow the subsequent development of the place. They are not anonymous like cities, and local people spot you, you find your way around, and you meet the same people at different times of the day. That’s how I ended up chatting to various people today. People just tell you stuff, unsolicited, and its usually an eclectic mix of all sorts, stuff which you couldn’t predict.

Like the German bloke who works in the IGA. He came and sat next to me and ate his lunch because he’d seen me and Gerty riding around last evening and had spotted me buying food earlier. Originally from Wurtburg, he used to work in Cricklewood at the same time as I was learning to drive a London bus there.

And the lady in the camping shop who had just moved back to WA after living in NSW for years. When her mum died, she moved back as mum was no longer around to interfere in her life. She got rid of all of her stuff, bought a small caravan and worked her way westwards, intending to live in the van and exist on very little because she didn’t want possessions and didn’t want to end up like her sisters, bogged down with suburbia and nicknacs but no experience of anything beyond the State border. But then she met a bloke and that was that; no caravan living, and somebody telling her what to do, but the sex is apparently good so she puts up with him! And I only went in to buy a pair of swimming goggles.

Then earlier in the morning, when I was sitting on the rocks down by the waterwheel, near to the lighthouse,watching the ocean and doing nothing in particular, the peace was disturbed by:

‘ Oi, are you on that bike?. The postie?”

“ Yes, why, you run it over or something?”

“ Ha ha! No, but did I see you on the Nullarbor a couple of weeks ago?”

“ Yes, probably. Yellow panniers, swag on the back?”

“Yes. Oh bloody hell. How cool is that? You were in the middle of nowhere, and me and my mate were driving along.I said ‘ Christ that bloke’s got some balls riding across here’. And bloody hell, it’s not a bloke at all but a sheila! Bloody good on yer!”

We then had a discussion about riding around Australia, and how he’d finally persuaded his mate to drive from the east coast to Perth because they rarely used their 4WD for their intended purpose, but then the mate’s wife phoned to say she was flying to Perth to meet them, so that was that. No more boys’ road trip, and now it looks like he is going round the top end on his own. Funny stuff that I would never have expected to have been party to, but I am now just because I happened to wander into a town and people spotted me. I don’t even know their names, but our paths crossed this morning for a very short time, and I became part of their lives.

But after so much talking, I needed to go and see stuff so I had a good look at the waterwheel again, this time with nobody about. 

It was built just over 100 years ago, and pumped water from a nearby stream to the lighthouse, firstly for the construction workers, then the lighthouse keepers. When it fell into disrepair, it gradually calcified and is now half wood, half rock. Real Flintstones stuff.

Somebody had also told me about Hamelin Bay, about 15 kms north of Augusta. For some reason, rays frequent the shore there, coming in really close, and carrying on doing what they do, completely unconcerned that humans are about. The lady in the info place reckoned the middle of the day was a good time, so I headed up there for about 1230, not really expecting to see any. But there they were, about six Southern Eagle rays, gliding about in the surf about a metre from shore. Fantastic.

These particular rays - rays are chondrichthyes  and are closely related to sharks; both have skeletons made of cartilage, which means they are light and flexible - differ from other rays in that they have long tails with venomous  stingey bits which they will get you with if you scare them. Their bodies are like long diamond shapes, and they live in the open ocean rather than on the seabed. They’re quite big too - about a metre across, but they’re not the biggest. Manta rays are much bigger - up to 9 m across.

But they are beautiful creatures, graceful and inquisitive, and even a fish hater like me was fascinated by them although I stopped short of letting their wings brush against my legs, not because I thought they might sting me but because I didn’t like the though of a fish touching me. Yuk yuk yuk.

Rays are protected species, and that bit of coast is a known habitat for them; dogs are not allowed on the beach, so I guess that they’ve come to realise that it’s a pretty safe place for them and that’s why they hand about down there. It was very cool to see them though. Very cool.

There was an old wooden jetty down there too, or at least the remains of one. A;parently it is left over from the days when timber used to be shipped from the bush around Augusta, to Europe for building materials.

On the way back, I headed up to the Augusta lookout, up another dirt track through the bush to highground overlooking the Blackwood River and the Southern Ocean. 

It was very quiet up there too, apart from the ever present and ever amusing crows, but it was clouding over and getting cold, so I headed back to the hostel, and gave Gerty a bit of TLC. Just a bit of chain tweaking and a tightening of a few nuts, but she is now good to go and ready for an onward ride tomorrow.

Job for tomorrow: clean the camera sensor!!