Wednesday

Wednesday

I got out of bed when i saw Costa's light on, about 6am. Enjoyed a cuppa & bicky, loo break, and chatted till about 7:20am. I thought how much I appreciated this man who would not now accept any payment of any money at all. What a representative of creative love he was, while how estranged he felt from anything like creativity, & love. He had some dorper sheep to keep the grass around his dam down. He had served a country in a tank division. He had been a hunter of venison, goat, fish etc, but he confided that he couldn't even kill a sheep now, he got a neighbour to do it and he helped hang the meat after the fact. And he could tell me one story after another of his friends and neighbours' funerals that he had been present at.

We certainly aren't here forever, and in that moment our mortality seemed to be underscored.

Things are not always what they seem.

We hugged. He thanked me for coming. And I collected my walking sticks and headed down the driveway, noting an old steel fireplace that he had made, with a hot water jacket in it to give hot showers while he was building his house. Too heavy for the scrap metal merchant to take with all the other stuff.

A lovely walk along the old Calder Highway. Not much traffic. Stopped and put my feet up on a concrete table and chair setting, at a little rest area, which has fallen into disuse sonce the freeway came through. Had an anzac bicky and water. 

Recalled the next little storylet from that 1st Century Greek document about Yeshua. He seemed to have amazing authority to the ordinary people, more than the Doctors of the Law. I wondered if it was simply the authority of integrity.

Got to Harcourt about 12:20pm, bought a coffee and bacon and egg roll with lovely salad for lunch. Found the room codes for my room etc at TREAD Motel, had a shower, washed my clothes, hung them up and had a half hour snooze. Then planned a children's program that I said I would oversee at Orange on the Saturday of the weekend. And, a friend arrived with dinner in hand, and rang from the car park. We enjoyed catching up, bought a coffee, went for a drive, checked out stone quarries up on Mt. Alexander, and Eucalypts on the way to Castlemaine, bought a drumstick, returned and talked about old times and shared issues and problems. 

I repacked my bag for tomorrow's walk, and plan to leave most of it somewhere safe, and then return in a car from Bendigo, to collect what i leave, to lighten my walking load, so that I have more of a chance of actually making it the whole 27km before dinner time.

What a rich day! 

Wrote up his blog, and to bed about 11:30pm.

Good night.