Saturday November 8th Overcast, showers and windy again.

And wherever you are and wherever you go There’s always going to be some light
But I got to get out I got to break it out now
Before the final crack of dawn
So we got to make the most of our one night together
When its over you know
We’ll both be so alone

Forbes on a Saturday morning was like something out of a Wild West movie except that the transportation was cars. The railroad depot newly painted was a museum, a crow sat on the semaphore signal while a freight train stopped road traffic while the guard changed the points for the train’s onward journey to Parkes.



I walked the town at dawn and met Butch who was opening the local Mazda dealership. “How many do you want?” he said, “Oh just looking at the Mazda Three” I replied. “Its crap” he said, “What about the Mazda Two?” “Yeah, its crap as well”, “Then the six?”, “Crap” “What do you recommend”, “The Suzuki Swift” (they make bikes as well), and so we talked for nearly an hour and I listened to the history of Forbes and the wisdom of a man who had seen it all and told me more about rural life than any book.





The four bikes were soon on their way to Eugowra, through bushranger country, past Escort Rock, were Ben Hall and the gang robbed the gold escort in 1862. Flat roads, nice wide turns and then tight corners and small hills revealing the Australian vista exactly like the Australian landscape paintings in the NSW Art Gallery.