Hoping to make the 17km to the turn off in Mareeba on this day.
Up at 6, but still took till 6:45 before I got going. Dad sent me off with a blessing & a cup of tea in the little thermos which Emily in Charters Towers gave me.
Doing a walk that has a pilgrimage aspect to it has got me thinking about things that are normally considered fringe kind of stuff. Like blessings - and curses. Who has time, capacity, & even an excuse to think about fringe stuff in normal life? Anyway I feel like another piece of the puzzle came together for me this morning as Dad & I parted. It was pulling together bits of that book on the left and right brain hemispheres and what Dad and I had been talking about. So I went back 20 steps and told him what seemed to impress on me as important. I guess it made me crystallize my thinking a bit more. That might be the use of doing pilgrimages with friends - you bounce off each other and talk about the things you think you're seeing and here their thoughts too. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Around 7am Chris Vella, whose farm we had camped on the edge of, drove by, doing his rounds, waved, and called out to wish me “All the best” on my journey.
All the best on yours too Chis. Thanks for being such a friendly, open human being.
I see a little more each day, why in the Judeao- Christian Scriptures, Genesis chapter One, it says 7 times.. “ “And God saw that it was…good”. “Good” can apparently include baby-ish, immature, still developing, & lacking. Yee Har! - that’s ‘me’.
“Creative love, please oversee this ecosystem which I call “Me”, in that way too.
A little sign tells me something…
..
But the small hill it is on its not as high as the next hill after it, and mountains tower around us…. So…?
I can see the back of another sign. When I look at the front it tells me about what I have just passed through:
Interesting stuff, where the water flows…
The road has small shoulders at times, but no trolley and much of the time not a lot of traffic, makes it still very do-able.
The bloke in this truck asked where I was going, and said he could drop me off at “the corner” (probably of this road, and the highway at Northern Mareeba). What a lovely offer. 
..
I explained my situation, needing to walk it. He wished me all the best for my trip, I did the same for his getting back to work for the day, and off we went. Thanks bloke, for your thoughtful offer. And thanks also to thoughtful spurr-of-the-moment, though considered offers, being expressed through this fellow this day!
Interesting, & beautiful country up here: farms; coffee, mangos, avocados, sugar-cane, tree-lined farms & avenues, orchard perimeters, palm trees.. banana trees, figs, pointsianas, water-chanels, dams, isolated hills, big mountains.. tall white palm-tree-like structures on the side of ranges..
Before an appointment to meet a friend of a friend, I made it to this sign:
Then Dad picked me up 200m down the road and off we went to do a tiny bit of shopping and meet Jeff at 2pm. We met up for an hour with Jeff & heard some of his amazing story.
He gave us a spot to stay for the night, a chance to join a time of prayer tomorrow morning at 7:30am, with a group called “The Royals” (I didn’t ask, but I don’t think they were thinking of royalty with respect to King Charles III, but viewing that Jewish carpenter who split history in two, as the incumbent Monarch of all of humanity, to whom all the government's of the world will have to give account. And I am 100% with that idea, and that claim!) That would be ideal for a pilgrimage like this one! We’ll see how it goes.
At 5pm Dad drops me back at the spot just past the Welcome to Mareeba sign, and I cross the railway line & hit the Mulligan Highway before 6pm, and turn left, Northwards, at the North of Mareeba.
At 6pm I come to this sign indicating conditions of roads from here on:
I expect Dad to pick me up in the next half an hour.
At 6:20pm I reach this sign North of Mareeba:
And by 6:30pm I look back to see this Northern sign:
So, though the plan is to take up Jeff’s offer tonight, for sleeping, I'll start up again in the morning wherever I leave off tonight.
6:35pm the sun has set. I’ll put my head torch on shortly, this is a cool time to walk, (& reminds me of that story about “going for a walk in the cool of the evening”), but I expect Dad any time now.
Oops he just missed me & went sailing past. I ring him and wait at this sign on the right (where there is also a street turning off at the left): [21 km walked on the way today.]
