May 13th: Echidna Encounter!

Day 40 (Day 15 in Australia)

Every post I’ve written in this travel blog to date has been chronological, which probably gets a bit dull. So, in case there is something good on TV, today I’ll do the highlights first. That way, if you get a bit bored you can bail out, assured it does not suddenly turn into Paul Theroux.

So for me, it happened at about 3:20pm when we were a long way into our epic 700km trip from St George into the real Outback at Blackall, Phil spotted an echidna crossing the road. I shouted to Carolyn to stop, which she did quickly. We were on a very long, straight road with nothing coming in either direction  

I jumped out of the back seat with my camera phone and pressed apps at random to eventually get the camera activated. By now the little echidna (about twice the size of a hedgehog) had spotted me and turned around to start going the other way muttering something about ‘bloody tourists’.

The two of us then did a ‘dosey doe’ as I tried - and failed - to get a close up of his head and his pointy nose while dealing with shadows from the bright sun.

So I tried a bit of video - remember this is in the middle of a main road so we all keeping half an eye out in both directions.

Meanwhile, everyone else is taking photos of me taking photos of the echidna.

Then I started to worry that I had spooked him and he would just sit in the road until a road train (an artic pulling 3 trailers) came along. After checking it wasn’t illegal to handle them I tried to move him to the side of the road. 

He was a bit spikey!

I’ve picked up hedgehogs before and they are quite easy to handle but this chap’s spikes form a ball. I couldn’t get enough purchase on him. Stupidly, I had left my echidna handling gloves in the UK  

Next, I tried picking him up in my fleece. Slightly better but as soon as I touched him (or her) he shook himself and gripped the tarmac. I’ve no idea how he did it but I could not budge him. He was welded to the road.

We decided it was best not to stress him out further and hoped he would continue crossing after we’d gone. Sure enough, as soon as we walked away he started to waddle off in the direction he had been going before we interrupted him. 

As we drove off one of the said leviathan road trains came along (at 110 kph!) on the other side of the road. Those things are about 50 metres long. We turned around to see him safely reach the grass verge as the enormous truck shot by. It is fair (and sad) to say it would not have stopped for him.

This was the highlight of my day. You may think it wasn’t a big deal but bear in mind Carolyn is a Queenslander who has lived in Australia for most of her life and Phil has been here for about 30 years and they have only ever seen about 3 echidnas before today. To see one close up and to even handle one was just great.

What else happened?

We officially passed into The Outback…

We saw several (live) kangaroos, including a glimpse of the taller red variety.

Lots and lots of emus. Plus a couple of cranes.

We had big, blue cloudless skies. The landscape was vast. Much vasterer than the vast of previous vast sky days. Every now and then the bush would be much smaller and almost devoid of trees, a legacy of recent bush fires, which are a very serious threat in this part of Australia. Here and there were smallish cacti.

When we stopped for coffee at Roma we saw their famous ‘bottle trees’, a great source of water apparently for the early pioneers of the Outback.

Talking of trees, we saw another stump painted bright blue. We’ve seen several recently though I’m yet to photograph one. Some have had a sign attached, “RUOK”, which is related to mental health and a grim reminder of the struggle facing Australian farmers. There is an average of 1 suicide among them every 10 days. We should remember that when we complain about the price of food, eh?

As we passed through a tiny township called Surat we stopped to film this pretty little building. 

In the space of about 30 minutes we passed through Mungalalla (an Aborigibal word meaning ‘bird shout’ for the noise an emu makes). It is the poorest town in Australia and then through Tambo is the oldest in the outback allegedly. 

We’ve now completed 1473km of our epic 1865km road trip from Sydney to Winton. Two short legs to go and tomorrow is a two night stop, ‘glamping’ at Longreach.