Boulia - Day 14

Fortunately the tyre was repairable - it had been pierced by a large splinter of wood.
Bill made us coffee and opened a fruit cake to share with us out the back of the shop with some of the their staff at their smoko time whilst the tyre was being repaired.
Then we ended up there most the morning talking and having "smoko" with Bill and his wife Val who own the general store / coffee shop / hardware store and "Bills Tyres" in Boulia.
The shop was amazing and has anything you could want. it needs to as it is the only store in town.

Val was a nurse - and has worked around the outback in her career.
She had many stories to tell of working in bush hospitals.
She told us about a matron at the Boulia hospital when she used to work there ( it is just a primary care centre now). The matron was pretty much permanently on call - but used to play golf on a Thursday afternoon. This was really her only time off.
Sometimes someone would come into the hospital on a Thursday afternoon and ask Val - "Do you think I am sick enough to call in matron off the golf course?".
Most often she would tell them - "No - so come back in a few hours - and if you are not feeling too bad then I would leave it until tomorrow morning to come and see Matron"

Val also has a 1925 vintage car that she proudly took is up the road, to their house, to see. She also has 2 Brolgas that regularly visit her house (as she feeds them) and we saw them wandering round the spare block next store when we were there.

We spent the afternoon wandering around this little township of Boulia before heading back to do some washing.

There is quite a lot of birdlife around the campsite and we have spotted the Brolgas down on the banks along the Burke River near the campground.
Each day at sunset and sunrise you can hear a huge flock of cockatoos long before you see them - they look like a swarm from a distance and the sound of this flock is almost deafeningly loud when they come into sight and fly over us.

We are starting to get cooler weather now as we are starting to get further south - but this cold front that has hit means that we have traded swimmers and an early evening swim to track pants and beany - well at least in the evenings.

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