October 24, 2024
The Bus
To Wallaroo
Yorke Peninsula coaches will, space permitting, carry an unboxed bicycle for the princely sum of $25 and all care no responsibility. Same for surf boards, not that I have one, but that tells you a bit about why people want to go to the Yorke Peninsula. If the bus cargo bay is full, bicycles (or surf boards) get bumped. Given that YP coaches averaged 8 people per 32 seat coach, I decided not to worry about the possibility of bumping and booked my ticket.
The bus left at 4pm, bicycles needing to arrive at 3 to be eyeballed by the bus driver. "Some people box their bikes," chirped my telephone contact at YP Coaches. "Most of them just wrap it up in an old blanket or something."
Off I went to Vinnies and got myself a king size doona for the princely sum of $10. It was a nice doona, almost too nice to wrap around a bicycle in the cargo bay of a bus, but I did it anyway. While in the process of wrapping up my bike I unknowingly dropped my wallet which was immediately snaffled up by, as the security firm reviewing CCTV footage put it "a gentleman walking by." Although I have issue with the "gentleman" descriptor.
Cue two hours of cancelling cards, reporting credit card fraud (said non-gentleman went on a fast food spree in the time it took to stop the card) and finally getting on my bus with a card borrowed from Mr Titanium and 5 minutes to spare. Lucky I turned up two hours early is all I can say.
The bus meandered north, stopping at every tin-pot town to drop off mail and passengers. Sometimes we even stopped at the designated bus stops instead of stopping determined by a shout of "Oi, bus driver name, can you drop me here instead?"
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Evening shadows lengthened over the Yorke Peninsula, with tantalising glimpses of the Gulf St Vincent as we passed Port Wakefield.
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I landed like a bag lady with my candy-bag and large doona-wrapped parcel at the Wallaroo rotunda and rode the loaded bike to the Cornucopia Hotel, clocking up an impressive 2km for the first day of my tour.
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It can only get better from here.
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3 weeks ago
As a Vincentian who delivers food parcels to the needy financed in part by process from Vinnie's stores I commend your choice of Vinnie's over another Op shop.
3 weeks ago