Twelve empty wine bottles under the kitchen table told the story of last night's party, as did the bleary eyes watching breakfast preparations.
Nested with Nikki and Myrta and chatted on the morning drive, quickly developing crow’s nest numb bum. Road very rough through dry country, crossing numerous parched creek beds and water channels. We were, though, briefly distracted from that early on when we followed a stretch of water thronging with birds of all shapes and sizes, wading, airborne and perched high in trees.
Beyond a massive dam built across the valley and supervised by several white men and numerous black work gangs, water lay very close to the road, yet we saw little cultivation. We couldn’t understand why this easy water wasn't being used to irrigate more crops. There were the usual tall and leafy cornfields and these were occasionally broken by the golden face of a sunflower seeded by the wind from a nearby sunflower field, their flowerheads like smiling faces turned towards the sun, their bright colours matched by the flash of red birds against the green and yellow.
Slowly the land became more undulating, and Stanley ground up hills before easing down the other side. We saw more and more corrugated iron roofs amongst the grass, mud and thatched roofs too, and an occasional witches’-hat granary visible through the shrubbery.
We stopped for water in the town of Iringa but the pressure was so low we only got half a tank. That was a blessing but the grey clouds and rain and sudden drop in temperature were not. Asphalt roads took us out of town, up long hills in biting wind, despite a now bluer sky; into pine plantations that reminded me of the Nariel Valley in northeast Victoria. Here though, swampy grassed plains awash with water separated the hillocks of dark greens. For the first time in days we saw creeks flowing with fast clear water.
When we camped, on a narrow dirt road off a curve in the main road, we battled against the wind to get the fire going, and everyone spent the evening coughing and dodging swirling smoke. The cold drove us all to bed early but it also made for a spectacularly starry night. And there were no sounds of civilisation and no visitors. At last, we were able to relax and not worry about putting everything away.
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