Heather's travel notes: March 7 The end of a wonderful journey exploring corners!

We’re home after almost 7 weeks on the road - hard to believe, but we travelled over 9000 kilometres. Lindsay counted many hundreds of birds while I peered at plants and rocks and, like a Tricoteuse, knitted as kilometre after kilometre crunched under our wheels - 14 beanies to show for those many Kms!

In spite of the heat, it was such wonderful country. We feel so lucky to be able to travel like this and it doesn’t cost much - around $100 a day for fuel and camping fee. So it’s affordable, relatively speaking.

For 5 of those 7 weeks the temperatures were close to, or over, 40C so staying cool and hydrated was a high priority. Our bodies breathed a deep sigh of relief when we hit temps in the 30s as we travelled back east and ‘closer’ to home. After such desiccating heat for so much of our trip, our last day on the road was a bit of a shock. It began with gale force winds, beating rain and hail and did not reach much above 20C. What amazing contrasts!

Our mini garden welcomed us with the last of its summer fruit - half kilogram of tomatoes some of which were almost liquid, but others green (fried green tomatoes for breakfast this morning - yum!), and a basin of juicy, almost melting, figs oozing sweet bubbles of syrup. Thank goodness for irrigation - on a minor home-front scale of course!!

After a day at home, the birds returned and have been buzzing around keeping a watchful eye on our movements in case we escape too soon. I reckon they do a flypast every day when we’re away to see if we are there. Our ‘resident’ doves arrived back and walked up and down pretending to forage on the front terrace in a little welcome home, ‘now you’re back, feed me’ display. The mynas came warily back a day later and patiently took their turn at the water bath. A female Blackbird picked up the scent of disturbed soil as we repositioned pots from under the tree and for the last couple of days she has been pecking about looking for goodies. And we got a surprise visit from a Pied Currawong and a young Grey Butcherbird both heralding their presence with glorious melodic song. I know lots of people don’t like Butcherbirds, but their song is beautiful and, in the end, all the birds seem to know they have to get along if they want to hang around our place. Wonderful to come home to our little garden and birds!

So now we are clearing away and sorting, repairs etc etc in readines for our next adventures.

IN THE MEANTIME .... thanks for sharing our journey. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Our next journey will take us way up north to the ice and snow of the Arctic Circle to travel through an entirely different kind of desert but desert nevertheless. But before that, you must treat yourselves to a different slant, the ‘other story’, as seen and told by Lindsay. A bientot but please read on and enjoy. Variety and diversity are the spice of life ......