FINED IN FINLEY

The contrast between the clarity of the water in the irrigation channels of the Riverlands and the dense brown murk of the Murray is stark. Driving into a wide blue horizon across flat plains I ponder the madness and arrogance of water ownership and am reminded of a small regional town I drove through where the people who own the dam water cannot release it because the people who own the channels it will fill, do not want the water now. There is a big risk that the town will flood, again, if the release is not made. The township is peppered with handmade signs pleading for protection.

I am in Long Paddock country, and it has the sculptured beauty of a landscape curated by a colonial Capability Brown. The landscapes he created in the English countryside would have had follies, missing here but the emerald crops look like well mown lawns and the trees, as if they are tended by an arborist. Absorbed in this beauty slightly blighted by the kangaroo carnage and not quite adjusted to the 50 kilometre per hour speed in and out of townships, I am stopped by Paul, the Policeman who after advising me that we are being recorded, states that I am almost 30 kilometre`s over the speed limit. It is the first time I have ever been caught for speeding ...well there was the time I cried...a lot.... but that is another story.

In the long interval after he takes my license and goes back to his car to do whatever police people do whilst they make you sweat, I ponder the practicalities of perhaps losing my license this early in my journey. There is an advertisement for a German supermarket chain where a woman has to go to another place to get an item and as she leaves the store she turns to the checkout and says wistfully " You will always be my first .... pregnant pause ...shop". I use this line on Paul when he returns. " You will always be my first ...speeding ticket." He blushes scarlet and advises me that he has halved my fine, which remains hefty.

The plains are home to a number of sprawling hamlets whose most prominent features are hospitals, multiple huge poker machine venues and visitor information centres. I love visitor information centres, which are usually home to good toilet facilities and staff, knowledgeable and passionate about their area. I have been recommended worthy points of interest in the sprawling town where I will spend the night. Without a four-wheel vehicle I am limited to monuments and the man-made, in this case a very tidy lake walk. I do wonder if visitor centres might someday expand to include paying respects to First nations people, and fire pits and places to sit and listen to stories told by indigenous people, yarning spaces.

I have plenty of time to ponder my yearning for a deeper understanding and experience of this country during my night in a highway hotel where the gear changes of the B doubles seem to happen just outside my door. Noisy in Narranderer.