Emus welcome us to Balranald

Today we took a relaxed pace from Tumut to Balranard. We are into “long distance between things” country. My bike is only good for 180-200 miles on a tank of gas so I am now into the mode of “See gas, Buy gas”. While gas stations are in short supply there is a surplus of emus. Our first sighting was 2 emus, then it was 2 dozen, over the next hill was another 2 dozen. Then there was a larger group off in the distance. When we checked into the motel the desk clerk said he was out checking on cattle today and saw around 500 emus. When we stopped to get pictures the emus would run off but if we stayed there they became curious and came over to the fence for a closer look at us. I am pleasantly that all of these birds were on the other side of the fence. Lots of the area is not fenced and it is enough of a problem riding through the cattle let alone Big Bird's cousins.

Curious Emus

We also saw a large herd of cattle, larger than what we have seen to date. And of course there were lots of sheep. It appears that different areas raise different breeds of sheep. I am guessing that this is because of climate and different vegetation types. This is also cotton farming country. When the cotton is picked the machines roll the cotton into large cylinders and cover it with yellow plastic sheeting. The rolls are placed in a row of groups of 6. The rolls are carried on trucks, 6 rolls to a truck. The highway has tufts of cotton all over the sides of the road.

No "Jump Down, Turn Around, Pick a bale of cotton" here

Passing through the town of Adelong? we saw a sign for the ruins of an old gold stamping mill so we took a look. We noticed on a sign here and also at the Killer Whale museum that Aborigine people were employed. It would be interesting to see how that worked as I had heard on a previous trip that they were not interested in living the white man's lifestyle.

Dinner was at a local pub. We started talking to a woman and her son. They were on their way to Adelaide where he had been transferred and she was keeping him company on the trip and would then fly back to Brisbane. The cost of living here is much higher so I asked about their minimum wage, She said that is about $18 an hour for people 18 and older. You can start work at 14 ½ tears old for a much lower wage. So the fast food industry has employees 14-17 years old and I guess they find new careers at 18.