Watching Toby get chewed up and spat out by a Tiger

After the hard day yesterday, today was brilliant! Awoke refreshed, with not a lot of distance to cover to finish off Leg 4 — about 40 km to Bordertown, SA. I left Kaniva early and headed out for the border between Victoria and South Australia at Serviceton. I was soooo happy to finally reach the border. Although I’ve already covered half the distance of my journey, in my mind the border has always been the ‘halfway’ milestone.

The border rest-stop was good — a nineteenth-century dispute over 3km of the border between Victoria and South Australia, which made it all the way to the High Court and then the Privy Council, made for an interesting read, and might explain some of the early animosity and rivalry between the two colonies. I stayed at the rest stop to brew a coffee (what better way to mark leaving Victoria) and forgot to put my watch back, so was 30 minutes out for the rest of the day until I realised.

Stopping at the quarantine bins for fruit at the border, I met a German couple in a rented campervan on their way to Adelaide, then Uluṟu. From what they told me I’m fairly certain they’re going to climb it, but I didn’t push back on the issue. I did, however, warn them to take crocodile warnings seriously, as our salties seem to love the taste of German backpacker.

I arrived in Bordertown just before midday (although I thought it was after 12, of course, because of my watch on Victorian time) and decided to pull into the pub for a beer and some lunch, and to watch the AFL Grand Final between the Richmond Tigers and the Greater Western Sydney Giants. The plan was to find a campsite and get my laundry done after the game. Today was meant to be a total rest day, if I had’ve made it all the way yesterday.

Sitting at the bar having a few frothies in my school dress, I provided plenty of amusement and laughs to the Bordertown locals there to watch the game and cash in on an arrangement whereby those in the pub’s footy tipping competition during the season received free drinks — beer, wine, spirits, everything — for the duration of the game. So you can imagine, there were some great local characters in there to get “their money’s worth”. I finally realised my watch was late when the game started half an hour early (by the pub clock)!

Whilst drinking, eating a nice chicken parma, and thoroughly enjoying the on-field defeat being doled out to Toby Greene, the publican Catherine Wheeler offered me a free room for the night! Bonus!! It was a wonderful development, as I was having a lot of fun and meant I could keep drinking. Hehehe…

The only catch to the free room is that I can’t get access to my bicycle until 0930 tomorrow morning, and will therefore have to really get going once the bike is out of the shed, to allow for my inevitable hangover. That’s OK though, I’ll sleep in and get my laundry etc. done before I leave.